Some good news! Duron+Thunderbird debuts June 5
AMD will present Thunderbird and Duron at Computex in Taiwan on June 5th. The article indicates Thunderbird will ship with 128 KB L1 cache (64 KB I + 64 KB D) and 256 KB L2 cache. The low-cost Athlon-based chip, Duron, will contain 128 KB L1 cache (same as Thunderbird) with a 64 KB L2 cache. Though the L2 cache size does seem rather small, remember that it is exclusive, which means there is no duplication from the L1 cache. The Thunderbird will debut at 750 MHz to 1 GHz, as has been reported previously, while the Duron will be introduced at 700 MHz. The article also mentions chipsets for the new processors, and states that sample motherboards based on VIA's KZ133 chipset should be on display during the launch, while ALi is expected to produce a chipset within the same timeframe.
VR-Zone has more details on ALi's Athlon chipset:
This chipset can support the present Slot A Athlon, Socket A Duron and Thunderbird CPUs. This chipset can support PC-133 and AGP 4X as well. For more special features, this chipset can support next generation DDR 266 and will be the only chipset now to support this feature. As for VIA, the chipset to support DDR 266, the KZ266 can only wait till September to be released. Therefore, AMD 760 chipset to support DDR can only be available in September. SIS too also going to unveil their new chipset, the SIS 730 which can support ATA-100 but not DDR.
from aceshardware.com
They also have a table with Duron prices:
550 mhz $107
600 mhz $137
650 mhz $187
700 mhz $241
wow! That should make the ASP well above 100!
Paul |
