EP and Thread,
You don't want my opinion on our (cough) AG.....so here's a couple of YUK articles:
theregister.co.uk
AMD, Via, Intel chipsets -- FIC's future view
A presentation of First International Corporation (FIC) of its motherboard offerings during the year 2000 has cast light on future technology arriving from Intel, Via and AMD.
According to the document we have seen, AMD has just started sampling an Irongate 4 chipset, which will start to be produced in volume in June of this year. In the second quarter of this year, Via will go into production of KM133 chipset, and start providing samples of its Apollo FX266M chipset, with Solano production, which supports PC133, IGT and AGP4x, starting in April. Via is also releasing a Pro Media 2 product late in this quarter.
In the second half of the year, Camino II (the 820e) will go into production, supporting ATA100 and 2, 4 and 6 channel audio. The Via FX266H production will start in the same time period, and so too will Solano II, which again is ATA100, and supports 2,4, and 6 channel audio.
In the last quarter of this year, the Via PM266H will start to sample, and will be in production in the first quarter of next year.
FIC will roll out a large number of motherboards during the year, including the FC15, the AM11, the AD11, the AM31, the FX11, the FG31, the FS33, the FR31 and the FT31. The SD11 will support Irongate 4.
Many of these mobos willl support FIC's Novus technology, which sends you useful audio messages during setup including: "Caution! No CPU detected. Please check your PC" and "Caution! No VGA detected. Please check your PC".
FIC's own Overclock Partner is a feature which allows processors to be overclocked from the BIOS, and is combined with a single jumper and a dipswitch which allows the system to return to default speed if any problems occur at power on. According to FIC, the system hardware is completely protected from any changes that are made at BIOS level. ©
AMD tells resellers Athlon story
A presentation AMD made to its resellers last month has revealed the extent of its penetration into world markets.
Although there is not much hard info about future technology in the Powerpoint slides we saw (they know how leaky the channel can be), at the same time the presentation is a glimpse into how the chip company is positioning its Athlon products.
As of January, AMD listed 13 suppliers of systems in the Americas, including Mexican company Mexmai, and Brazilian firm MicroTec. Gateway was not yet on the list, but is by now.
In Europe, system resellers include German firm Lion, Packard Bell, Centerprise, Transtech, Olidata, SPC, Evesham and Datagrossisten, giving a total of 15 system suppliers. In Asia-Japan, there are 16 system suppliers listed including Thai firm Atec, NEC, Biostar, Australian firm Edge, and three Singapore firms -- RFC, Systech and Amcom.
AMD advises its resellers to target the following segments: Ultimate, Enthusiast and Performance. For example an ultimate system would have the top end Athlons, and over 256MB of memory, high end graphics cards, etc.
According to the document we saw, the Athlon product family will grow across all segments with "improved and differentiated features" during those year. The Athlon Value will pitch against Intel in the, err, value segment, while the Professional and Ultra will include on chip full speed L2 cache, DDR memory, multiprocessor chipsets and other features "which will allow AMD to penetrate the commercial desktop space along with the workstation and server markets".
AMD will be exhibiting at CeBIT and we will pop along there tomorrow to see what the score is. ©
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