Ah what the heck, I'll chime in here. At work, a co-worker just upgraded to a Pee 3 733, we immediately tested it using cpumark99, one of the 6 tests used for the Icomp3 that was developed by Inhell. His new machine scored 63.7, I have a Tyan S1590S AT w/ that K6 III + 450 oc'ed to 600, I got a 63.4 using the same test. I find it hard to understand that there is a guy in here with a P 3 450 knocking anyones $ 50 upgrade, especially since he hasn't even investigated the capabilities of the other equipment. As for those benchmarks that show the K6 III + eating up equivalent or edging the higher rated Mhz Pentium III's & Celerons, those were posted directly on Intel's website, which is where I compared the cpumark99 scores personally. I wished I would have saved them some how, but when Pee 4 came out, the benchmarks that Intel had there were changed/updated to new web pages. As well, I don't see Intel boasting about their new P4 being anything better than 1.2 Ghz Athlon (
http://www.cpuscorecard.com/ indicates otherwise). Prior to this, Intel demonstrated that the various mb chipsets handled specific ranges of coppermine P3's and Celeron's and provided performance benchmarks. In several of the benchmark's they had posted, the K6 3 + beat P3 700 and lower on many of the benchmarks, this would also include any of the Celerons that were listed. I apologize for not having the hard and fast evidence that you would need to irrefutably reconcile it with yourself that the veracity of my statements are genuine, but it would serve me no purpose to tell you this. In terms you might understand, the same co-worker has a P 3 550E as his home system. I gave him the location of Sandra and a copy of cpumark99. He tested his machine at home and I told him the benches I was getting. I also told him based upon the benches Intel provided, the performance ratings he would get. The next day, he told me that not only were the numbers I gave him correct based upon Intels figures, the method in which the benchmarks were run produced identical results on his machine. BTW, my K6 III + handily scored better in the bench marks @ 550 Mhz. The look on his face was that I had told him that my p*n*s was bigger than his and then I proved it ! I hope you have a Merry Christmas, and remember to keep an open mind for the new millenium.