duron

Duron is a line of x86-compatible microprocessors produced by AMD, introduced in 1999 as a low-cost alternative to AMD’s Athlon processors and to Intel’s Celeron line. The Duron aimed at entry-level desktop PCs, offering a balance of performance and affordability for home users, students, and small businesses.

Duron processors were designed to work with mainstream desktop platforms of the era, using the same families of sockets as Athlon CPUs and supporting similar memory configurations. They typically featured lower clock speeds and smaller cache than their higher-end counterparts, which helped reduce production costs while delivering adequate performance for everyday tasks.

Throughout its life, the Duron line expanded with several revisions and model families, gradually improving performance while maintaining a budget-oriented price point. Duron chips were widely distributed through OEMs and retail channels, contributing to AMD’s broader presence in the consumer market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Duron line was gradually phased out in the early to mid-2000s as AMD introduced the Sempron brand to consolidate its budget offerings and simplify product naming. Sempron adopted similar design principles—cost-conscious, mainstream CPUs intended for general computing—and effectively succeeded Duron in AMD’s lineup.

In retrospective overviews, the Duron line is remembered as AMD’s affordable option that helped broaden access to desktop computing during a transitional period for consumer PCs.