Athlon Killer - This December !

[merchant2112]

give me a 10 gigahz computer and i'll ah take over the world? or figure out the track resolts in advance.

[Frank]

Welp, the Athlon's are up to 900Mhz already at Kryotech.
http://www.kryotech.com/

[Gurm]

Folks,

The last time I looked at the register, their headline (during the recent eclipse) was:

Apple Pulls Largest PR Stunt Ever! Hires God as Consultant!

Oh yeah, I take that SO seriously. And... err... Williamette? A chip that isn't even on Intel's 2001 roadmap, last time I looked at it? Sorry. The i820 isn't even ready, nevermind some new mythical chipset necessary to run "Willameena".

- Gurm

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G. U. R. M. It's not hard to spell, is it? Then don't screw it up!
The word "Gurm" is in no way Copyright 1999 Jorden van der Elst.

[dnickle]

Ummmm, don't hold your breath, you'll turn blue and die! Be thankful if you get a coppermine for under a billion in the next 6 months.

[Agent31]

For once I'm not going to join the scepticists, I think Intel might just have something ready by Feb next year... hell, I can wait!

Some Matrox users are without a doubt the most sceptical people I've ever come across. (hehe, perhaps it has something to do with the way Matrox treats them )

[Gurm]

Agent31:

I am, I confess, a skeptic. Hard-core. But usually I'm right. People were hooing and hahing about this GeSpot thing being out in August. It's now late October and nVidia have announced that there won't be ANY until mid-November at the earliest. Stable drivers are still 6 months out.

V4 won't exist until next year - also prophecied for August.

Intel CAN'T release a new chip until there's a new motherboard to put it on. The new motherboards were recently delayed because you can't, for any amount of money, obtain RDRAM in quantity. Therefore, the i820's are back on the design table, which pushes the chips back a good several months.

I'm not being skeptical, I'm being realistic. If the chips were ready TOMORROW, there's still no motherboard until January.

- Gurm

P.S. The Computer Engineers I work with, all of whom have PhD's, are pretty skeptical about 1Ghz chips - not because of the speed problems, but because the chips have to get bigger - there's a limit on transistor size. And when the chips get bigger there are all kinds of problems with interference and crosstalk because a 1Ghz signal is entirely the wrong wavelength. So 1Ghz is gonna be tough to do, not to mention being hot enough to melt silicon.

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G. U. R. M. It's not hard to spell, is it? Then don't screw it up!
The word "Gurm" is in no way Copyright 1999 Jorden van der Elst.

[This message has been edited by Gurm (edited 20 October 1999).]

[Marmita]

1st, The register is not a joke news site it's just adding some humor to the news they post.

2nd, I believe Intel DOES have the next generation chip ready but they don't want to release it because selling old chips is much more profitable, they have great yields with old chips. With resources like Intel has it's impossible they don't have the next chip. Do you really believe That Intel's CEO runs a P3-733 ??? I think he must be running a willimette 1500Mhz ...

3rd, The only problem with the new chipset is that rambus is not quite available at reasonable prices, and doesn't give the speed advantaged when paired with a 133Mh bus. intel will have a chipset in the near future.

4th, Never... but never will AMD beat Intel, not because they don't have great products, it's rather because Intel is too big to beat... It's harder then beating MS !!! As you all know although Athlon and K6 are selling great AMD still loses money quarter after a quarter... it's because of the R&D, It costs alot to design a new chip.
another reason why Intel will always be on top is because simple people that invest in a computer want %100 compatibility and no problems... most of the people are not benchmarking freaks and don't really give a damn if ther computer runs %5 faster in quake !!

5th and last, As I saw from benchmarking the new P3-coppermine MATCHS Athlon scores at the same speed... and that is with the Via chipset which we all know is VERY slow !!!
so how can u explain that a 9M transistors chip that has a 5 years old Core can match a new cpu with 23M transistors and a brand newly designed core ??? I think it is called better an simpler design...

[MM]

Just in case you didn't know Intel ALWAYS sells the old stuff... they ALWAYS have 2 next-in-the-line CPUs in progress (a pipeline, no less). And there is nothing exceptional about Intel being able to release a CPU it was planning to release half a year later. What is exceptional is that they would actually do that - great job AMD!


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P2c-300a/450, 192MB PC125 SDRAM, Quantum Fireball Plus KA 18.2GB 7200rpm, Panasonic 7502B x4/x8 Ultra SCSI CD-R, Tekram DC-390U2W Ultra2Wide SCSI controller, Diamond MX300 (Vortex2), Creative Labs AWE64 Gold Sound Blaster, A-Trend Voodoo II 12MB, Matrox Millennium G400Max, 19" Hitachi SuperScan 752, Logitech Cordless MouseMan Wheel and some other fancy stuff

[Joel]

Found this at www.amdzone.com

"1GHz Athlon Article-Chris 'ruiner' Tom 9:26 p.m. CST

Thanks to Tige Cook for this one. ZDNet has an article up discussing AMD's intentions on putting a 1GHz Athlon out. Here's some:

The company will dedicate the fab, located in Dresden, Germany, Wednesday morning. The first samples of Athlons running at approximately 900MHz are expected later this quarter

Code-named Willamette, Intel's first 1GHz desktop chip is expected in late 2000 or early 2001. It will use a design different than that used by current Pentium III chips, according to the company. Sources say that Willamette's new architecture is based on the processor core of Intel's forthcoming Itanium chip and that it will use a 423 pin socket, whose design is similar to that of the 370 pin Socket 370 now in use.

December my ass."

Joel



[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 21 October 1999).]

[Wombat]

The 1.1GHz intel chip was just a hoax. I saw it posted somewhere, I think slashdot.

-Wombat


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K6-2/350@400, 503+ rev 1.2a, 128MB PC100 RAM, Millenium G200, RH6.1 w/ 2.2.12-20, Win98, and too many classes

[billko]

It's just funny... I've never seen the Intel crowd so wigged out, before. I guess the AMD Athlon really has them freaked out.

I've never belonged to either club; rather, I always based my CPU purchase on what suited me best. If Intel made something I thought was worth taking a look at, I would buy it. So far, though, I have bought almost exclusively AMD. Right now, I have an AMD K6-III which does great for me. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't buy Intel if they came out with something cost-effective AND high-performance. In fact, I don't even plan on getting an Athlon because what I have suits my needs - for now, at least. When I feel the need to upgrade, you bet I will look at what both companies have to offer. Or, if some third company were to come out with something that I felt was better than anything AMD or Intel had to offer, I'd probably go with them.

Bill


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People call me a computer god; I remind them that I am merely a minor deity...


[This message has been edited by billko (edited 21 October 1999).]

[rylan]

Even thought I find this entirely amusing that the die-hard intel fans are arguing over this mystery chip, I still feel compelled to set the record straight on some facts I've seen thrown around.

First, the lack of Rambus RDRAM is only a small part of the problem with the i820 chipset. The major problem is that it was designed _incorrectly_ and has some major flaws in it pertaining to memory bank handling. For example, certain combinations of memory chips (or just putting any dimm in bank 2 along with bank 0 and 1) will cause memory read errors and crash the system. There are several other problems, but no need to get very technical about that.

As for the benchmarks, Yes, the new P3 Coppermine 600 slighty beats the Athlon 600 by several tenths of a percent on most of the benchmarks. However, you have to remember that this was done using a .18 micron coppermine with 133mhz memory bus (and agp and pci way o/c to do this), compared to the .25 micron athlon at 100 memory bus and 200 cpu reference bus. Basically, this means that intel's new smaller fab technology just barely edges out AMD's older fab tech. The new Dresden facility is now producing .18 micron athlons (and K6-IIIs etc). This pretty much means that while intel needs the new tech to stay up to speed, amd can kick in the new tech .18 process and blow intel away (in athlon vs coppermine). Coppermine technology for the P-!!! is expected to max out around 850-900mhz, while the Athlon is expected to scale to 1.2GHz with .18 micron (eventually).

As for the processor debate.. don't expect to see 1GHz Athlons until Q1-Q2 2000 (except from kryotech), and the mystery chip from Intel until Q4 2000.

[Mark F]

My 2 cents on the register story -

Yes, it's been uncovered that the story was wrong. I think they had the right idea, but mixed up "display" silicon with "retail" silicon. Early next year they will display it. And it usualy takes about 6 months ( if all goes well) for it to reach retail. So that puts it at Q3 maybe Q4. Hmmmmm.

Mark F.

On a different but related note -

Has any one noticed that Intel hasn't been too vocal about VIA lately. Yes, the chipset being fabed ny Nat Semi (and their cross licencing) hasn't help Intel's earlier cries. But with the i820 problems, who else can help them sell the B series chips (133fsb) and coppermines? I bet as soon as they get the i820 wrinkels wooked out their Legal and PR hounds will again be striking the anti-VIA gone.
Has anyone heard what Intel oficialy says the B series and copermines are suposed to be used on/with since there isn't an oficial 133fsb chipset? (this is a serius question on my part/maybe I missed it/so if anyone has heard and answers I would apreciate it/it's bad when you have to distingiush between a real question and sarcasm ;( )

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD


[This message has been edited by Mark F (edited 21 October 1999).]

[Marmita]

As we both saw the coppermine beats the athlon at same speeds on the VIA 133Mhz board which as I mentions is SLOW! for example it has %40 slower AGP x4 implemetation and uses SDRAM... as you may already see the 840 chipset is flawless and fast and the 820 will be ready soon to...
The .18 micron only let intel speed up a 5 year old core with less then half the number of transistors the Athlon has... it is cheaper to manufactor (half transistor amount = half silicon size and that is without takeing in acount the .18 process) and still with half 9M transistors it beats the Athlon with 23M transistors.... you must admit this is quite impressive! and btw if you read the review you might have seen the the 600/100Mhz version of the coppermine beats the Athlon too and it isn't using a 200Mhz bus...
How can AMD win if there chips are more expansive to manufactor and they don't come close to the amount of processors intel sells...

[franksch3]

Rylan,

in most application, especially games, memory bandwidth doesn't really improve performance because of the cache. And a chip at .18 at 600 MHz, isn't faster than a chip at .25 at 600 MHz. The die size has nothing to do with the speed.

But ofcourse, a smaller size, means that the clock can go higher. And for that I must give compliments to AMD that their Athlon can reach higher clockspeeds where the P3 must resort to smaller die size.