Whassup with this?Opinion: Intel winds down in GHz clock race
By Jack Robertson
Electronic Buyers' News (10/31/00, 09:50:23 AM EST)
Here's a great present, AMD -- from your good friend, Intel. The microprocessor king is forfeiting the mainstream desktop GHz clock race to its closest competitor for the next nine months -- until Intel fields its own comparable speed-grade desktop processors in mid-2001.
But you say Intel will be unveiling the 1.4- to 1.5-GHz Pentium 4, known as the Willamette, next month? Despite what the Santa Clara, Calif., marketing machine may try to convey, the Willamette appearing Nov. 20 isn't a mainstream desktop processor andcomparable to AMD's Athlon Thunderbird and Mustang. It's aimed strictly at the very high-performance (more than $2,000) workstation and desktop market.
That's all that Intel ever claimed the Willamette Pentium 4 would be. Until now, that is. Without an above-1-GHz processor in its current line, Intel has been forced to make Willamette appear to be something it was never intended to be: an MPU bearing a clock speed competitive with AMD's mainstream chips.
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Whatever the reason for holding back any 1.13-GHz or higher-speed Pentium III processors, Intel has ceded the mainstream (less than $2,000) desktop clock race to AMD for almost three quarters. Unless Intel marketers can persuade people that the pricey Willamette Pentium 4 with expensive Direct Rambus memory is somehow midrange.
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