Engel,
I didn't hear you whining when Tom was a shill for Intel. When Intel shipped him NON clocklocked Celeron As so he could tout them to the overclocker society and show how the Celeron A was really the equal of the Pentium II. Now, when he says something good about AMD you cry like a baby..<G>
Read it and weep...woodbutcher. <G>
AMD Moves onto the Overtaking Lane
Created: October 15, 1998
By Thomas Pabst
Summary
You can see that K7 has definitely got the guts to make Intel some serious
headache. The one only disadvantage of K7, offering a proprietary platform
with Slot A, is more than equalized by that. Today you need to buy a new
motherboard every 6 months if you want to stay on the edge of technology
anyway. What difference does it make if your next motherboard is a Slot A
motherboard with an AMD chipset rather than a Slot 1 motherboard with
Intel's upcoming Camino chipset? Slot A and its EV6 protocol is the
superior solution. K7 may well be superior to Katmai as well.
Let me summarize the situation again:
Right now AMD is close to releasing an improved K6-2 core running
at 400 MHz. This CPU will fight the lower high end Intel CPUs and
will plug into a Super7 board. Super7 boards are now a reliable
solution, offering a very good price/performance ratio.
In a few months AMD will launch ‘Sharptooth', the K6-3, in speed
versions of 300-450 MHz. This CPU will beat Intel's Pentium II CPUs
at the same clock speed and it will still fit into a normal Super7
board. Sharptooth should keep all Super7 platform owners from
moving to Slot 1. At the same time Intel will have Katmai ready to
launch. However, if Katmai shouldn't have some more features than
KNI and what has been disclosed by Intel yet, it will not be any faster
than the current PII in every day applications. That's why I expect
that Katmai will have some more new features than what we know of
yet.
Later on in the first half of 1999 AMD will launch the new K7
processor. This processor will be the first to use the new Slot A. It
should mark a good moment in time considering a move from Super7
to Slot A without touching Slot1, because K7 may well be superior to
any available Intel CPU. K7 will probably launch in speed versions of
500, 550, 600+…. At that time the worst case scenario for AMD
would be if Intel has already got ‘Coppermine' ready, a .18 micron
version of Katmai with on-die L2 cache. The architecture of
Coppermine's core will still be very close if not identical to Katmai, so
that Coppermine can only beat K7 with higher clock speeds. Making
this happen will be the task for Intel until July 1999.
If you think that KNI vs. 3DNow! will make a serious difference I would like
you to consider the following. AMD will already have millions of K6-2
shipped when the first Katmai processor is sold. Thus giving a huge
advantage in 3DNow! installed base vs. a non-existent installed base for
KNI. K6-2 and K6-3 will continue to ship at a much more attractive price
point than Katmai, since Katmai will be the latest Intel CPU available and
thus be very expensive. The result is that the 3DNow! installed base will
increase even more, whilst the KNI installed base will grow a lot slower. It is
very unlikely that there will be more KNI CPUs in use than 3Dnow! CPUs
once K7 hits the shelves. The logical equation of the above said is that ISVs
must be crazy to only support KNI in their games, they should rather
concentrate on 3Dnow! in case they care about the sales of their games. It
seems fairly obvious that K7 will be correct in continuing to support 3DNow!
rather than KNI.
Looking at the situations and projections is forging a strong believe that
AMD has finally got it damn right. They are not just presenting a new CPU,
this time there's a whole straight forward road map, attacking Intel step by
step with the final crescendo at K7 launch. We know that this is what it
takes for the introduction of a new proprietary platform such as Slot A, and I
am confident that the superior design will indeed win a lot of customers.
I have to congratulate AMD for a battle plan that's laid out well. I am
honestly impressed and I am not impressed easily, as you know. Intel will
have to come up with some real hard work this time. I believe that only a
fully new designed CPU will have a good chance against K7, so that they
will need to get Willamette done a lot earlier than planned.
-------------------
All the best..Jim |
