AMD's Duron Slated For June 135
Devil Ducky writes: "AMD announced that they will release the Duron sometime in mid June, instead of last April. The Duron is intended to compete on price with the fabled Intel Celeron. Duron will include 128KB of primary and 64KB of integrated cache, meanwhile Athlons contain 128KB primary and no integrated cache. When released it will be available in 600, 650, and 700MHz with plans for 750MHz soon. The story even makes some quick comments on the names Celeron and Duron."
tempted to buy flooring (Score:1)
Re:You are a typical American (Score:1)
Re:huh? (Score:1)
for (int i=1; i>0; i++)
your int will wrap arond to a negative number being less than zero and exiting the loop. A less error prone way of doing things would be...
while(1)...
or
for(;;)...
Now this is endless and more efficient (no incrementing!)
Re:OT, You don't know any typical Americans (Score:1)
Re:You are a typical American (Score:1)
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Why? What is wrong with socket 7? Ok, it isn't as fast as the super duper expenisive chips you can buy now, but amd k63's are pretty fast and are great for a large number of applications. Spending lots of $$ just to get the fastest cpu ever five minutes is quite idiotic. Get the chip that most fits your needs and for many people that still fits in a socket 7.
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Now we're going back to the good ole socket because the slot can't go above 1GHz? The word 'boondoggle' comes to mind.
Re:no, but you are a FUCKING IDIOT (Score:1)
Re:Where d'ya come up with dem names, dude? (Score:1)
"init() has already started. It is too late for the BIOS to vote."
Re:Socialism == Communism. Get your facts straight (Score:1)
Cheers.
--
"The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
The original chipset will work with the original K7 core, the current
VIA KX-133 chipset
Works with Slot A K7 and K75 cores, is currently incompatible with the new core because of trace length issues. Abit has a beta BIOS for the KA7 that claims to work with the new cores, but who's got a Thunderbird to try this out???
VIA KZ-133 chipset
WORKS with all Athlon cores, no different than the KX-133, with the exception that it supports Socket A.
AMD-760 chipset
Unreleased, haven't heard anything about it, other than its existence. Support for SMP? DDR? DMA/(66|100)? Anybody know?
The new Athlons will come in both Slot A and Socket A, but AMD is supposedly supplying slotted processors to the OEM market. If you're a DIYer, Socket A is the route to go.
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Re:"Bigotry" is a liberal code-word for "truth". (Score:1)
Re:Slot or Socket? (Score:1)
Why AMD moved to socket A (Score:2)
Re:A rare European who can face the truth. (Score:1)
Re:I assume you have a liberal arts degree. (Score:1)
Got a silly question (Score:1)
Okay here it is, won't the Duron be faster than the Athlon if it has 64KB of intergrated cache in addition to the 128 KB of primary?
Frode!
z
Re:You sing the praises of slave labor. (Score:1)
Both BMW and Daimler pre-date the camps by rather a long way. To a socialist, it probably just seems like "utilizing" "resources". To hell with the rights of the individual, the socialist says! Sacrifice him for the benefit of the collective!
To hell with the rights of the individual, the capitalist says! Sacrifice him for the profit of the company.
Sci-fi acid trip marketing names (Score:5)
-Where d'ya come up with dem names, dude?
-Silence! Your insolence must be punished! I sentence you to the depths of Xeon! You shall be devoured by the PowerPC... what? "PowerPC"? Who has changed the sacred scripts?!?
Re:Not endless (Score:1)
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Re:OT, You don't know any typical Americans (Score:1)
Back to my point though, the typical american today isn't the undereducated buffon...
This should read: ...the typical college-educated American today isn't the undereducated buffon...
who knew (Score:1)
Re:Why AMD moved to socket A (Score:1)
Remember, the Socket 7 architecture had off-chip L2 cache as well. It was placed on the motherboard.
Re:Good news for the consumer (Score:1)
So why am I wasting my time with a troll?
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
SlotA is getting retired Q3 or Q4 this year.
Why?
Because the tracelengths are -really- too long in the slot form for the processors to run very effectively at the speeds we're getting at (1Ghz+)
I assume you have a liberal arts degree. (Score:1)
Because logic and critical thinking are clearly beyond you.
Of course AMD can compete -- they are competing, they just posted record profits
It won't last now that they've hitched their wagon to a death-state. Perhaps they're hoping to "employ" slave labor, as did Porsche and IG Farben during WWII. It makes no difference. They'll be bled dry by the European parasites.
Just because you don't like socialism doesn't mean they're bound to fail, and it certainly doesn't mean they deserve to fail.
Socialism is theft. Period. End of story. Of course they deserve to fail, and the reason they will fail is the fact that Socialism removes incentives from the equation of human motivation. When there is no incentive to create wealth, no wealth will be created. It's that simple. This is why the economies of Europe are in ruins: They reward sloth and parasitism, they penalize innovation and the creation of wealth. Naturally, that which you most reward is what you'll get.
Every major European economy is totally dependent on foreign aid from the USA. Socialism "works" only as long as there is still one more victim to feed on.
anybody who does business with Germany "deserves to fail"!
That is correct.
Germany is officially a capitalist, democratic society
That's insane. They're a socialist country. They have a guaranteed month of full-pay vacation for every "worker" in the country (but not for executives and professionals, mind you; such "enemies of the people" are worked to death in accordance with orthodox Marxian dogma). Their taxes are four times as high as taxes in the US, and they have confiscatory "punitive" taxes on gasoline (to support an irrational "green" agenda of limiting civil mobility/liberty by way of a disincentive to own a car). They have a one-party political system. They have banned guns to prevent resistance to the dictatorial government, and they freely ban "unacceptable" forms of speech and expression.
Germany is the closest thing to a Stalinist state in modern Europe. There's nothing even remotely democratic/capitalist about the place.
Re:Good news for the consumer (Score:1)
Seriously though, I just saw the post by the AC and couldnt' resist! He was bating and I grabbed. I almost moderated it down to off topic but I posted instead here and somewhere else.
I've had experience with Oracle and Sybase and Postgres and MySql and MS SQL Server. The only one that is bad is SQL Server. The others have there strong points and their negative points. But except for SQL Server they are all really good DBs.
Re:$school[values] != $my[values] (Score:1)
Re:I assume you have a liberal arts degree. (Score:1)
Re:*East* Germany! Now it all makes much more sens (Score:1)
The Klingon Processor (Score:2)
Re:"Helped with the costs"?! Socialism. (Score:1)
AMD are really on a roll... (Score:2)
True, the K6 was no top-performer. But it was compatible and was damn cheap. Today, a few of my servers run Athlon... Linux, NT, even NetWare. Damn fast. And they're still cheaper than PIII's. The only thing missing is SMP boards.
I think the Duron will be a strong contender in the home-user market, and will be a good replacement for Socket 7-based compuets.
Is AMD making a serious run at Intel? (Score:3)
No matter what happens, this should be great for consumers. At the very least, Intel will once again have to drop prices on the Celeron.
industrial cement floors (Score:2)
You just _had_ to ask, didn't you? (OT) (Score:1)
Everyone who responded with help, thank you. If I knew where to send it, I would send each of you either $2 or a Sobe (I don't know which).
--
Star Trek vs Star Wars. [furryconflict.com]
Re:Typo?? (Score:2)
Construction Paper and Scotch Tape (Score:1)
Re:Typo?? (Score:2)
Re:Not endless (Score:1)
use overload "++" => sub { @_ };
# infinite loop
for (i=1; i>=0; i++) { do_stuff() }
Devil's Advocate's point of view. :) (Score:1)
The American educational system does exactly what it is suppsed to do:
Our public education systems churns out semi-literate, semi-educated consumeroids. However not all of us are beer bellied football junkies.
In other words, it separates that wheat from the chaff.. Those who want to learn, and to succeed, are given the chance to do so. The American educational system gives ample opportunity to rise to the challenge to learning HOW the world works.
But, for those people whose little heads hurt when they think a little too hard, there's the politically correct 'sheltered inner-child' track, where you get passing grades just for showing up. The products of this track go on to live paycheck to paycheck, feeding the economy with senseless spending of all things 'new and improved'.
Those who choose not to learn math and science (and that's what it is, a choice) are more easily led around by advertisers and used car salesmen - and those in turn work for people who DID pay attention in school.
America did not become a world economic leader by being a nation of scientists. It became a world leader by haveing the ideas of an enlightened few implemented by millions of factory workers.
I'm a Morlock. Please pass the Eloi.
Moderators smoke crack part IVXVIX (Score:1)
Re:Got a silly question (Score:2)
The L2 duron cache is exclusave, that is does not contain cache lines from the L1 cache. Many other processors don't work this way, in part because it is simpler to make a multi-processer system if only the L2 caches need to do bus-snooping. My guess is the Duron won't be too happy in a multi-processor system for this reason.
It'll still make a decent single CPU system, especally at the dirt cheap prices listed in the last article.
Godwins Law (Score:1)
Re:Slot or Socket? (VIA) (Score:2)
To cut a long story short, Intel figured this out, and put the smack down on anyone who supported the Athlon. Not just VIA, (whom Intel despise for matching their chipsets in many respects, and then selling them cheaper), but motherboard makers too. ASUS didn't even put the K7M on the front page of their website for months, and that was widely regarded as the best all-round K7 board! Personally I think Intel need to be taught a lesson, which is why I'm a confirmed AMD advocate now. Hopefully with Duron, and maybe Joshua (Heh! VIA get their own back!) assaulting the basic Celeron, the Athlon taking on the Celeron II and PIII, and the Thunderbird and Itanium slugging it out, those of us who are more tech-savvy can return the smack to Intel.
Anyway, to avoid going too OT here, it will be interesting to see exactly how AMD will make up the shortfall in mobos when the Duron is released. If the vacuum that faced the Athlon upon release can be avoided, we can hope for an interesting fight, which I hope makes Intel question a couple of fundamental issues (Such as, don't fire your older workers [faceintel.com], who've probably been in the game for a while, because they will go elsewhere [amd.com]). On another note, It would be cool to see AMD and VIA team up and use the same socket standards on their lower-range chips, or even better, to implement a standard everyone will use, and stop these tit-for-tat architecture changes, that renders building/upgrading machines a logical and financial grind! (Unlikely, but I suppose I can dream.....)
Re:Ug, bad technical writing at its *worst* (Score:1)
Re:The Klingon Processor (Score:1)
"salesman" yes, but... (Score:1)
I've worked as a retail sales cleark during my early college years. There was really not much to the 'sales' part of the job, but the store I worked in (software and game hardware) had an outstanding staff. We were all friends and we took interest in what we sold. This made a huge difference between our little group and the register-jockeys at Wal-Mart.
But, I'd caution against considering all people who sell things as being under the same 'retail salesman' umbrella. Throughout Europe, much more than here in the States, salespeople are often craftsmen selling their own products. These folks take pride in their stock because it is their handiwork (not the product of an assembly line robot) and it is their reputation.
You are right-on in the statement that retail salespeople are seen as little more than automatons, and often malicious pushers of junk, in other countries. But in these same countries, carftsmen who sell their work are respected and often treasured - much more so than here in the US. Here, anyone selling anything is seen as a retailer. Often, craftsmen are reduced to that leve, without deserving it.
A neighborhood baker, for example, is a staple of most smaller European towns, and every 'burb has a selection of specialized shops where folks go to get things repaired or replaced.
In the US, with a Wal-Mart and a McDonald's on every corner, the worth of a craftsman is reduced to rubble, while the opportunity to be a 'salesperson' is almost the de-facto entry point into the work force. I'm afraid that after everyone has worked their first job as a salesperson, it gives that 'profession' undue credibility. It's a stepping stone for the young - to learn the discipline of working for a living. Choosing to 'sell', especially hard-sell a poor product (and most products are poor thanks to economies of scale) for a career is much like aspiring to being a leech.
Re:Slot or Socket? (Score:1)
In the same way that it can be justified with the Celeron. The Celeron chip can't be used in old Socket-7 boards, or the old Pentium Pro Socket-8 boards. It requires its own motherboard. So does the Duron.
The point is that it's cheap to build a new system around either of these chips. That's why you'll find them in so many of the systems at Best Buy, Circuit City, or anywhere else that "normal" people go to buy PCs.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Duron. I'm in need of upgrading my old Socket-7 K6 system, and, since I need a new motherboard and RAM anyway, I'm gonna be a bit low on cash when it comes to the processor.
Slot or Socket? (Score:1)
Last time AMD went onto Slot A instead of Slot 1, and 'introduced' a whole new range of motherboards into the market. If this chip is aimed at the cost-effective end of the market, how would a motherboard upgrade (at the same time) be justified?
Re:You just _had_ to ask, didn't you? (OT) (Score:1)
Try:
www.arstechnica.com [arstechnica.com]. The articles are mostly slanted towards gamers who are hardware enthusiasts, but don't let that fool you--they have a lot of good info there behind the scenes.
Re:When to upgrade? (Score:1)
Re:Pathetic. Simply pathetic. (Score:1)
Canada is a third-world nation. If foreign aid from the US weren't propping up their quasi-socialist pseudo-economy, there would be widespread starvation.
Has anyone pointed out to you that the US's single largest trading partner is Canada. And that by volume it's almost twice that of the next nation.
They ban free speech, they ban the means of self-defense.
nay we just don't have the overwhelming desire to kill our fellow citizens.
The reason you've never revolted against your socialist masters is that you haven't the balls, the brains, or the means (weapons).
It's not a matter balls there was never any reason to.
And as for brains who keeps running out of visa's for foreign workers, huh?
and Weapons.... Ever heard of the Avro Arrow?
All you can do is sit around whining about how unfair it is that you can't compete with America.
Compete? dumb ass we run Ammerica from here. (and the air is much cleaner) Why to you think the exchange rate is where it is?
Re:industrial cement floors (Score:2)
My window commands a great view of "Target Plaza South", currently under construction in downtown Minneapolis. I have to tell you that the concrete floors being poured there recently have not anywhere near approached FF/FL "Superflat".
See, news for nerds does not have to be about computers. Many of us, particularly those with houses of our own, find concrete and the pouring of it, rather interesting.
Re:They *can't* compete. (Score:1)
man... come on, you can do better than this dude.
You work for a Fortune 500 company but YOU DON'T OWN IT: that would have been an argument in your favour... see my point? To clarify: I never said that if you're poor in the U.S you're a slave, but if you have a few money you're less free than a wealthy person: do you remember OJ Simpson?
And about my pocket, I get 75K$/year so I should't be here whining for the poor people, right? Instead that filthy european socialist culture makes me worry about people who can't make a living... and who cares if I earn 5K$/year less for the welfare state taxes, as long there's people who need social and medical assistance?
Ciao.
--
"The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
New Cyrix chip! Just look at this... (Score:1)
There is a new chip in town : The VIA Cyrix III!
Okay, let me clarify: I'm a student, not in anyway connected with Cyrix...heck, I didn't even have a PC in the glory-days of Cyrix(I had an ST and Amiga...). But I think the entry of a third party into the processor wars can only be a good thing.
The Cyrix III comes in several flavours: from the 433 to 533
So, what's it got?
The price, last time I checked, was about $80/Stg£50/IRL£60.
Okay...it isn't 1GHz stuff, so why get excited? Well read on...
When AMD started to compete for the home market, how often did it's processors get a positive review, how often did 'experts' refuse to even consider AMD credible as an alternative to Intel - and be honest, because a lot of people who are gushing about how great AMD are these days(and there is no question, they are great!) wouldn't give them a second glance a few years ago. Anyhow, Cyrix is only coming back into the fray now, but their chips look pretty good from where I'm sitting and, depending on your needs and budget, the chip could be a good choice. But wait...there's more...
VIA are the chipset people : this is a marketing department's dream! Without streching the imagination or the resources of VIA too much, it wouldn't be hard to put together a motherboard and processor package sold at a discount - I'm not talking halving prices here, or anything, but decent discount - I won't quote figures. And there's more!
Does anyone remember the 'old' Cyrix's project to have, and I quote, a "computer on a processor."? This means a one-chip computer...bios n' all. The time frame was to have the project finished by 2005...Anyone know how this project is going, if at all?
Compaq is rumoured to be considering a *cheap* budget PC based on the new VIA Cyrix III, which would be good news for us "stick-the-screwdriver-in-there-and-I'll-turn-on-
Surf by VIACyrix's site [cyrix.com] for info on VIA/Cyrix
or get the VIA Cyrix III info at: http://www.cyrix.com/products/cyr3brief
Just out of a matter of interest...what happened to all the other chip makers that had decided to compete against Intel during its reign...Cyrix and AMD were perhaps the most well known, but I seem to remember about three more...
Re:When to upgrade? (slightly OT) (Score:3)
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
Re:Stupid European. You just don't get it. (Score:1)
Perhaps more frightening to me is the tolerance the slashdot community has shown for the insipid comments of the homophobic posters. One would think that more people with moderator points would be incensed enough to moderate these things down. Sure they have the right to post their trash, but if as a community we fail to moderate them down, aren't we tacitly condoning their views?
Synesthesia
Who invented death camps? (Score:1)
I'll also say that many of the 'death camps' that Lenin inherited were left-overs from the Tsarist regieme...so could you please clarify what you mean by 'death-camp' mentality, because I'm not sure whether your blaming the wrong person, policy or belief system.
Re:*East* Germany! Now it all makes much more sens (Score:1)
CPU Question (Score:1)
outstanding troll thread (Score:2)
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blue
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Re:Slot or Socket? (Score:2)
No, in fact, this isn't justifiable, and it is all Intel's fault. Perhaps you've not seen this before, but remmeber how Cyrix was sued 7 times or whatever, and VIA is in a lot of hot water right now with intel? Its because they basically used technology intel decided it owns in their products. I am not debating whether this is "right" or not, but it is the reason AMD will not make a chip that will go on mobo's designed for Intel chips (eg, slot 1): Intel would sue them.
It is most certainly NOT AMD's fault that they can't just go make chips using the same interface as Intel's chips. See, Intel is able to controll most motherboard and chipset manafacturers, because those companies get most of their money making stuff tailored around Intel's line of products. Because Intel is a competitive company, it will obviously try to limit AMD's hold in the market. Thus they force AMD to design their own interface, and they also make chipset manafacturers (right now, VIA) suffer if they design chipsets around AMD's proucts. It costs money to design these chipsets, and even more money to get the market to accept them as viable and adopt them. Thus, AMD suffers because they have to waste resources creating and marketing their technologies, while Intel is accepted as the defacto standard.
Price point (Score:1)
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blue
Re:Sci-fi acid trip marketing names (Score:1)
more info on the duron (Score:1)
Re:Aaaaghhh!!! Proofread (Score:1)
>the Duron sometime in mid June, instead of last April."
FYI....This is not a language error. Both AMD and Intel were supposed to have their new processors on the market in April. They have pushed back their deadlines to June.
Think before you post......
Re:128KB L1 cache, 64KB L2? (Score:1)
Re:AMD are really on a roll... (Score:1)
Re:When to upgrade? (Score:1)
Re:When to upgrade? (Score:1)
>Is PC-133 "there" yet? Is it a cost-effective improvement over PC-100?
Yes. Assuming your mobo is running at 133, anyway. Via has chipsets out for both intel and AMD processors that support PC-133.
>Is PC-133++ anywhere near? (I.e., PC-150, PX-whatever.)
No. Current PC-133 can often be overclocked to 140-150 Mhz, but that is too near the edge of the performance envelope for commercial use. Faster memory is going to be DDR, by all indications.
>Is DDR memory "there" yet? Cost-effective?
Almost there. It is already in use on graphics cards, as you may know. The technology works. And it is not that much more expensive than normal SDRAM, unlike RDRAM.
> How do you expect the various AMD *ons to shake out in price/performace for a given clock speed?
I would think the order for price/performance will be like this:
Duron, Celeron, "Thunderbird", PIII
The reason is simple: Intel has a serious brand going there (bum BUM ba BUM!), and so AMD need to be that much better to beat them. Right now, AMD is.
>Should I wait a few months? Six months? A year? Or is the price/performance improvement going to be more or less continuous during that time?
Right now, wait. The reason is that right now, the bottleneck in system performance in the PC world is memory bandwidth. Up until fairly recently, this was not a problem -- back when clock multiplier ranged up to 3 or 3.5. But starting with the PIIs and continuing until now, CPU cores are running so fast that they are spending a lot of time waiting on memory.
Go check out the performance of various CPUs in benchmarks, say at Anandtech as in this set of benches [anandtech.com] of recent processors. What do you see? That at the high end, even with full-speed L2 cache of 256K, PIIIs are still only gaining about 60% of their theoretically possible speedup. That is, a PIII 1000 rates 191 on the SySMark 2000, while the PIII 866 gets 176. 1000/866 is 1.154; that is, the PIII 1G is running 15% faster in core. But it is only getting 8.5% higher performance.
Now go look at this page [ttp] on Tom's site, where he is exploring the effect of raising the bus speed to 150Mhz. He find some very significant speed ups from raising bus speed; i.e., in Quake III a PIII 975/150 (150Mhz bus) is faster than a PIII 1000/133.
The upshot of this is, that once AMD has a chipset out supporting DDR, they should have a real winner. You might start out just buying a Duron and using old SDRAM in it, but then later upgrading the processor to some mongo Athlon 1.4G or whatever, with DDR SDRAM 133.
Right now the best price-performance you can do is to buy a BX board, some PC-100, and overclock a celeron-II from 566 to 850ish. (Assuming you can find a cel-II; I dunno that you can buy them on the street yet.) Very good price/performance here, but no future.
When to upgrade? (Score:2)
I am thinking about building a new system this summer. I never buy the fastest CPU, but rather pick one that is several notches down from the top, right at the sharpest bend in the price/performance curve. (That would put me at about 750-800MHz for an Athlon right now, but of course that will creep up over the course of the summer.)
The problem is, I will need a new motherboard as well. And that's where the unbound variables start expanding. So here are some questions. Alternatively, ignore the questions and just summarize what you would do if you were going to build a high end (but not top) x86 system in the near future.
- Is PC-133 "there" yet? Is it a cost-effective improvement over PC-100?
- Is PC-133++ anywhere near? (I.e., PC-150, PX-whatever.)
- Is DDR memory "there" yet? Cost-effective?
- How do you expect the various AMD *ons to shake out in price/performace for a given clock speed? (Assume general purpose developer's desktop plus scientific number crunching in the background.)
- Should I wait a few months? Six months? A year? Or is the price/performance improvement going to be more or less continuous during that time?
- Any other variables I should be asking about?
Thanks.--
Re:Is AMD making a serious run at Intel? (Score:2)
Thunderbird adds 256K on-chip exclusive L2 cache, and will see similar speed gains as when Intel moved from Katmai to Coppermine PIII (i.e. when they did the same thing). Thunderbird will clock for clock beat PIII.
But here's the real kicker: Athlon is available in volume now at 1 GHz, while PIII is at 866MHz (except for a few 1GHz samples at Dell). Intel claim 1GHz volume in Q3/4, when Thunderbird will be at 1.3-1.4GHz.
Duron will also beat Celeron II due to having more total cache (L1 + L2) as well as a full speed bus, unlike Celeron's deliberately restricted 66MHz one.
PIII Coppermine core is at the end of its life, and according to Intel may reach 1.1GHz max. Intel's future lies in the PIII Coppermine replacement core - Willamette which may sample in Q3, but is not expected in any quantity until late Q4 or 2001. In the meantime AMD have Mustang coming out... AMD also have the advantage of a modern copper interconnect fab process in their Dresden fab (licenced from Motorola), while Intel are still using slower aluminum interconnect and won't catch up for around a year.
Conclusion: For at least the remainder of this year, AMD's high end processors will be faster than anything available from Intel. In 2001 things may be a little more even as Intel catch up to AMD in updating their fabs, and getting an up-to-date processor core out, but some analysis are suggesting that AMD Mustang (in
Re:When to upgrade? - Typo alert! (Score:2)
That should have been "PC-whatever".
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Here's a roadmap (Score:1)
Thunderbird is new Athlon with integral, exclusive cache: 128k L1, 256k L2. Socket. Slot for OEMs. Copper interconnectivity (on new Athlons from Fab 30, at least). L1 cache is 10% faster than L2 cache. 1.7 V,
.13 process in 9 months to a year.
Next level chipsets feature DDR-266 (double data rate RAM) and 266 Mhz front-side bus. Look for AMD760, AMD760MP (for Athlon motherboards with two CPUs), Ali, Via KX266 and, on the low end (i.e., without DDR support), SiS730. Alpha EV6 point to point topology allows each CPU to have its own dedicated 64-bit, 200 Mhz interface to the chipset. Intel CPUs share access to the chipset.
Mustang & Corvette are upcoming Athlons w/ improved core and featuring up to 2 Mb L2 cache and PowerNow!.
PowerNow! is AMD's new CPU dynamic which automatically adjusts the core voltage (i.e., speed) according to the demands of the applications running at any given instant. PowerNow! technology works in combination with the motherboard BIOS and dynamically adjusts clock speed/voltage of the CPU during program usage.
New SIMB instructions will improve the exectution of double precision floating point & multimedia operations.
A biggie: LDT (Lightning Data Transport) I/O bus @1.6 Gb versus PCI @133 Mb, i810 @266 Mb. This is a broadly supported effort (40 companies to date) to eliminate disparate, dedicated microprocessor busses such as PCI, AGP and DRAM from upcoming high-bandwidth computer designs.
A Final Note: Don't make plans to simply extract the Athlon you may now have from your KX Motherboard and replace it with an Athlon with Integral cache when it arrives later this year. You may, however, look forward to the option of replacing a cacheless Athlon with a cached Athlon if 1) you have an AMD Irongate chipset or SD11 motherboard and 2) if you can find a slotted Athlon Tbird.
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Try clicking on *my* link (Score:1)
Re:Got a silly question (Score:2)
If a memory location is used frequently enough to be stored in the secondary cache, it will surely also be in the bigger primary cache, which is faster and looked at first. Thus the secondary cache is effectively useless, except maybe as a write-back buffer. Maybe this is a mistake in the article, or I've not understood?
(BTW wouldn't it be cool to write software that fits entirely in the primary cache - 128Kbyte used to be considered a lot! If there were some way to initialize the cache at boot time, you wouldn't need RAM at all
Re:One little question... (Score:1)
Alas, there is no real information regarding the possibilities of SMP in here. Perhaps AMD has forsaken the multi-processor pc market for the meantime! Woe is me.
Aaaaghhh!!! Proofread (Score:1)
Hemos consistently posts news that has some language error that renders the whole story stupid. "AMD announced that they will release the Duron sometime in mid June, instead of last April."
moderator who marked this as redundant (Score:1)
john
Re:Trademark Infringement? (Score:1)
From my limited understanding, the gold standard in Trademark infringement is if there is a reasonable expectation that the two products could be confused. ie, Having a McDonald's Hot Grit stand could get you in trouble, but a McDonald's Petrified Nattelie Portman Shoppe probably wouldn't.
Re:Trademark Infringement? (Score:1)
Driving on the roads of Florida, I can assure you that the goods are used in a complementary manner though
-L
Cyrix... (Score:1)
Re:Aaaaghhh!!! Proofread (Score:1)
Sargon (Score:2)
Re:Duron with VCRAM? (Score:1)
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
Re:Typo?? (Score:1)
Munky_v2 [dialug.org]
"Warning: You are logged into reality as root..."
Re:The Klingon Processor (Score:2)
huh? (Score:3)
for (int i=1; i>0; i++){
compete(INTEL, AMD_LATEST_CHIP);
compete(AMD, INTEL_LATEST_CHIP);
compete(Microsoft, COW_DUNG);
}
God I love endless loops.
Good news for the consumer (Score:3)
-- The Hollow Man
Re:Where d'ya come up with dem names, dude? (Score:2)
Intel name ALL their processors (at least the code names) on rivers in the Oregon area... Coppermine and Katmai are rivers as well AFAIK....
OT, You don't know any typical Americans (Score:2)
If one relies solely on what one is taught in our schools, that person is lost. However, our universities produce some of the most competant professionals on the planet.
Our public education systems churns out semi-literate, semi-educated consumeroids. However not all of us are beer bellied football junkies.
Where does the majority of the world's software development occur? Why? Because we've got the economic resources to draw the best and brightest from around the world, foreign and domestic.
Where did the power of the atom firse get harnessed? Why? Because our free society didn't allow any antisemitic dictator to drive the best jewish minds away and into the hands of the enemy.
Back to my point though, the typical american today isn't the undereducated buffon that for some reason seems to dominate all of our entertainment productions. Just as the typical German isn't an antisemitic bigot. Just as the typical isn't .
In fact, I'd prefer that the US kept it's nose out of the affairs of the rest of the world and that the rest of the world kept their noses out of ours.
LK
Re:Good news for the consumer (Score:2)
Don't everyone get upset, I've never had any real experience with Oracle software, but everyone who makes software can make it better with time.
Devil Ducky
Re:One little question... (Score:2)
Socket 7, fwiw, is pretty much officially dead by the end of this year/beginning of 2001. AMD will cut production on all non-mobile K6 line processors no later than Q1'01, if not earlier.
SOrry, you want a Duron, you need a SocketA board.
Ditto Thunderbird (unless you get -really- lucky)
Re:When to upgrade? (Score:2)
The big question with this system is whether DDR is worth it. The actual cost of DDR should be barely more than the cost of PC133--it's just as easy to make, but it might cost a bit more because of limited supply. Instead the "cost" of going DDR is measured in time; DDR mobos don't look to be available until late this summer, a month or three after T-bird is released. If you can wait, don't buy until you see the first benchmarks of T-bird on DDR vs. T-bird with PC133. Don't make your decision on benchmarks of the PIII with DDR, which will probably be available sooner: the PIII's chip-to-Northbridge bandwidth is only 1.07 GHz/sec, so it is usually saturated by PC133. DDR ought to show a bigger performance increase on the T-bird's EV6 bus, which will run at 266 to match the DDR. On the other hand, don't plan on going DDR before you check out the benchmarks; no one really knows exactly how well it will perform.
As far as chipsets, you want to be looking at a VIA KZ133 if you're sticking with PC133 (NOT the KX133, which is apparently incompatible with the T-bird), and probably a KZ266 if you're going DDR, although there may be other DDR chipsets available for T-bird as well, most notably Micron's Samurai chipset.
The big unknown in the future x86 market is Intel's new Willamette core. It probably won't be out in volume until January or so, and thus might not be an option for you. On the other hand, they'll be looking to do a paper release in late summer or early fall to compete for press time with AMD, so we should have a good idea of how well it'll perform months before we can actually buy one. (And maybe if you're lucky and willing to pay a lot, you might even be able to buy one in 2000!)
The reason I mention it is that while the general consensus seems to be that Willy won't be such a huge deal, Paul De Mone, one of the most respected semiconductor analysts on the net, has had some very positive things to say about it [realworldtech.com]. If you're interested after reading the two mondo articles there (and if you're any kind of hardware geek, I can't see how you won't be), you might want to check out what he's had to say about Willamette in Ace's Hardware's technical forum [aceshardware.com]. Frankly, Paul really knows what he's talking about, and he seems to think Willamette will solidly give Intel back the performance crown. Whether Intel will use that as an excuse to price Willy out of the upper-mainstream market where you're looking to buy is another question entirely.
Any other variables I should be asking about?
Well, depending on what you're looking to do with this computer (and with what OS), the video card is probably the most important component these days--certainly more important than chipset and arguably more important than CPU. If you want good 3D performance, then at the moment that means running Windows. Period. This is changing relatively quickly, though, so it may be less of an issue when you get your computer. (It will NOT be a non-issue.) 3dfx has always had some of the better Linux drivers, so if you're going Linux one of the new V5 cards is probably your best bet. nVidia is well known for having terrible, and closed, Linux drivers, although they claim that that's changing. If you're going to be running Windows, a DDR nVidia GeForce 1 is probably going to be the best bet to match your computer (i.e. just-below-really-high-end).
If you're going to be running Windows games a lot, then this will be the most important part of your purchase, hands down. The two obvious choices will be the V5 and the GeForce 2; the GF2 is a bit faster with full-screen anti-aliasing off, while the V5 is faster with it on. The GF2 (and GF1) has T&L to speed up future high-poly games; the V5 has Glide which provides the fastest play in games like Ultima IX and anything using the Unreal engine (Unreal Tournament, plus many upcoming games like Duke 4). To really decide, however, you should go to some indepth benchmarks from a gaming site and look at the resolutions/settings you'll be playing at in the games you'll be playing and see which card performs better. Also ATI has a card aimed at the high-end 3D market due out this summer.
If you don't need good 3D, take a look at an ATI card for great DVD playback (depending on your ethical opinion thereof), TV-tuner, and general features, or take a look at a Matrox G400 for top-notch quality and the best dual-monitor support around.
Other than that, you should be fine performance-wise. (I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the monitor is the most important piece of equipment for overall computer satisfaction, and that a nice keyboard and mouse are close behind.) Of course, for "general purpose developer's desktop plus scientific number crunching in the background"--i.e. compiling stuff and running distributed.net--IMO any computer sold today is more than adequate, although of course extra compiling speed is always nice, as is a higher ranking. In this case, I'd say the most important factor is how much cache is typically consumed by compiling. (Anyone care to inform me?) If it's a low-cache amount low-memory access activity, go with a Celeron or Duron; if it's low-cache amount high-memory access, go with a Duron; if it's medium-cache amount, go with a T-bird or Coppermine; if it uses up a whole lot of cache you may be better off with an Athlon "Classic" or a Katmai PIII for the money.
Hope this helped!
Re:Where d'ya come up with dem names, dude? (Score:5)
And Pentium was their 5th generation chip, so it follows a standard branding formula -- take something descriptive, and add a futuristic, newspeak ending:
pent (5) + ium = pentium.
And so it came to pass that someone at Intel probably went back to the well, and came up with these lines of thought:
"Hey we have two new chips. Compared to the Pentium, we want to convey the image that one is a God and the other a vegetable...."
Zeus - us + X - Z + on = Xeon
Celery - y + on = Celeron
And then they had their 6th generation chip to contend with. Rather than name it Sexium ("It renders pr0n sites REALLY fast") they needed to jazz it up. So when they went to talk about it one of the marketroids probably asked his kid:
"It an -ium"
Not to be outdone, of course, our friends in San Jose or Dallas or wherever their headquarters is this week faced a similar problem wanting names for the chips after their K6. So they wanted something to indicate how fast the new chip runs:
Athlete -ete + on = Athlon
Then, they discovered, however, that their trusted business model of low-cost chips had started to leak away. "Quick, get something to keep this fluid from escaping!"
Durex -ex + on = Duron
And we are where we are today. At least hypothetically.... So what's next? Maybe our friends in Phoenix will unveil a stripped-down G4, and call it "McPPC" -- playing on the whole "tasty and inexpensive" identification. Or someone will come out with a low-power mobile chip called the "Volxon" (Volks -ks + x + on).
My opinion only, IANAL.
Re:One little question... (Score:2)
By the way, Socket 7? What where you thinking man?!