Hi Paul,
Yes, that may be it, a whole lot of coppermines to move during a traditionally slow season.
On the other hand...
Reports from the overclocking sites are that the .25 Athlon parts are all marked 600 or better if you open the cartridge, even the parts sold as 500's. If this is the case, what would be the slowest .18 part?
If AMD ships 2-3 million Athlons at 700, 750, and 800MHZ in Q1, and the K6-2 Plus takes over the 550, 600 and 650 speed slots, Coppermine will either have to bin out higher than it seems to have been doing so far, or be sold for lower prices, and so far the lower prices approach seems to have been selected.
Coppermine is a better chip, clock for clock, than the K6-2 Plus will be, but as AMD found out when it tried to position its big L2 K6-3 chip against the Pentium II, the marketplace regards MHZ as the main criteria for comparing systems.
The via/cyrix/whatever chip is targeted at the 500 and below speed range, where neither Intel nor AMD will want to play - when do you think we'll be seeing them in volume?
Dan |
