AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 1 GHz / 800 MHz

By popular request, we'll be including RC5 benchmarks in CPU reviews starting today. For those that don't know, the RC5 is a form of encryption. Distributed.net is holding a challenge to crack the RC5 encryption to show that it is weak and encourage the implementation of stronger security. Click here to learn more about the Distributed.net challenge and join Team AnandTech for the opportunity to win $1000.

L2 cache speed clearly does not matter in this purely CPU intensive benchmark as can be seen by the identical scores of the Thunderbird and original Athlon at the same clock speed. It's also interesting to note that the platform used here makes absolutely no difference with regards to performance - raw CPU power is the key here as evidenced by the exact double performance of the 1 GHz Athlon/Thunderbird compared to the Athlon 500. Once the Duron is available, it will be the ideal CPU for cracking RC5.