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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (38893)	10/9/1998 12:31:00 PM
From: Kevin K. Spurway	Respond to of 1577109

Re: "But the K7 is supposed to be a highend server/workstation processor. Don't tell me AMD is going to rely on Win98 with 16bit code and "Mutant Alien Blaster" (tm EPhud '98) benchmarks to backup their claims? I don't think so. They'll need to show Spec and TpmC benchmarks. Also clock for clock won't cut it either. If the K7 is a 7th generation chip it will need both operations per clock and lots of clocks." I think K7 will be for both desktop and server, and AMD will use the K7 core similar to the way the PII core is used now. I think the K7 will be faster than anything Intel offers for the desktop. I'm not so sure about servers--it depends what kind/speed of cache (and how much) AMD decides to attach. And obviously clock speed is always a critical issue. If AMD can't get the clock speed high enough, the server market is out. I'm pretty confident though that a 500 MHz K7 will outperform even a 550 MHz Katmai. We'll see. Kevin

To: Elmer who wrote (38893)	10/9/1998 3:52:00 PM
From: Petz	Respond to of 1577109

AMD clearly differentiating business market from consumer market ELmer, the weakness of AMD processors on WIN NT will be eliminated long before the K7 comes out. Comments at the CC and by Atiq Raza in MaximumPC Mag make it clear that the K6-3 will be as fast or faster as any Intel CPU clock for clock in Windows NT. Furthermore, news.com contains the following quote: AMD will also give an update on the K6-3, a 450-MHz version of the K6-2 with integrated cache memory. It appears that the K6-3 will start at 450 MHz, rather than 400, or even 350 as had been surmised. Big corporations have been slow in adopting K6 chips until now and most of the reason for this -- other than the "nobody ever got fired for recommending Intel" syndrome-- is poor Windows NT performance by K6's. Since the K6-3 is being clearly marketed for the higher priced corporate desktop market, it will scream on NT. By starting it at 450 rather than 400, AMD is more clearly differentiating their consumer processors (K6-2) from their business processors (K6-3, K7). The delay in the K6-3 now makes sense. Why confuse the market (like Intel does), by releasing chips at the same clock speed and many varieties? Especially when you are selling all the K6-2's you can make, it didn't make sense to come out with a desktop 350 or 400 MHz K6-3. Also, by "starving" the K6-3's by a couple tenths of a volt, the 450MHz desktop chips will make great 350 and 400 MHz laptop chips, opening up a third market for AMD. Petz