What is the difference between an Intel Pentium II and an Intel Pentium III?

Answer 1

• The Intel Pentium II was released in a Slot 1 package, while the Pentium Pro used socket 8. Adapters were available to use Pentium Pros in Slot 1 motherboards, and a version of the Pentium II was released for Socket 8.
• The Intel Pentium II includes MMX instructions, while the Pentium Pro does not.
• The Intel Pentium II has improved performance in 16-bit applications. 32-bit applications were not affected quite as much.
  

Answer 2

The Intel Pentium III introduced SSE instructions to improve multimedia performance. Otherwise, at the same clock speed, a Pentium II and a Pentium III were equal in performance. Later Pentium III chips moved to .18 µm and .13 µm fabrication processes, which reduced power consumption and heat production and allowed the chip to scale to higher frequencies.

Answer 3

The Intel Pentium III introduced some new multimedia-oriented instructions, collectively known as "SSE", or "Streaming SIMD Extensions." Pentium IIIs also included a unique processor identification number, but this was removed with the final core revision, Tualatin.

Answer 4

The Pentium II has a higher clock rate, improved architecture, and integrates the L2 cache into the processor die, rather than placing it on the motherboard. The Pentium II also came in an easy-to-install Slot package, rather than a socket