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1.6GHz Athlon Computers, Via Announces KT266 chips

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the discussion-fodder dept.

GimpyAMD writes: " Sys has announced 1.6GHz desktop and workstation computers that use KryoTech's cooling process to achieve that clock rate with Athlons behind them. Apparently they will be out late October to November. Also, we have Via's press release on their KT266 chipset that supports DDRSDRAM ."

9 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Cheap RAM Still Not Cheap by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 4
    The problem with these vastly powerful CPUs is that they continue to outrace the availability of suitable RAM, in terms of cost, speed, and quantity.
    • When Pentium Pros were nicely harnessed with 64MB of RAM, it probably makes sense for something 10 times as fast to be "properly appointed" with something like 640MB of RAM;
    • These things need huge amounts of cache to run efficiently;
    • Idiot vendors will probably sell them with 128MB of RAM because that's what's not too expensive this month;
    • Most of the CPU power is outright wasted when it's spending it's interrupt time assortedly waiting for an IDE drive, a WinModem, and such.

      The killer hardware would be to have a bank of 16 "serial ATA" ports with an asynchronous drive on each port. Of course I2O would likely be better still, but that seems pretty vaprous, certainly for the consumer market...

    --
    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  2. Can't wait.. by Frijoles · · Score: 5

    I can't wait until we get to 1.21 GHz.. then I can run around saying, "1.21 GHz? 1.21 GHz?! The only thing capable of producing that much power is a bolt of lightning!!"

    1.21GHz!!

    --
    -Frijoles-
  3. Re:This is exactly what I want (more crack) by Soko · · Score: 5

    ...and this is in reference to...what? The story is about a company that uses a cooling unit (likely 50-60Lbs and a 400W power sink in itself) almost the size of the PC to overclock an Athlon to 1.6 GHz. You want to lug that around for a laptop? I can see it now:

    (On American flight 2603 to Little Rock)
    Stewardess: Excuse me sir, but you'll have to put your "laptop" away.
    Cecil: What? No way, lady, the guy next to me is using his! And he's only got a Tecra! Mine's a Sys Cold-Fusion!
    Stewardess: I know, sir, but your computer is taking up the entire aisle.
    Cecil. Computer? See, it fit's under the seat in front of me!
    Stewardess: Oh? Is THAT why the upolstery is smouldering? And that battery pack above us...
    Cecil: What? The lead-acid cells are 2 lbs under the storage capacity of the overhead bin!
    Stewardess: Actually, we need to stow those in the hazardous waste container at the back of the plane.
    Cecil: Great! No power! You have an adapter?
    Stewardess: How much power do you need?
    Cecil: Oh, about 1000 Watts
    Stewardess: That's just about how much the generator puts out for the whole aircraft. Shut it down, sir.
    Cecil: Awww, geez, it's such a nice laptop too. All the guys on Slashdot think so!

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  4. What about games? by LennyDotCom · · Score: 3

    You left out games
    Gamers arre the people how really push the emveope.
    If it wasn't for games everyone would use a mac

    --
    http://Lenny.com
  5. Re:1.66GHz desktop? by Frac · · Score: 5
    we really need to file this post together with the "but does it run linux?" and "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" under the cabinet of Generic posts that pop up again and again.

    nobody said a 1.66 Ghz chip is targeted at consumers for speedier IMing or word processing.. think about it.

  6. Re:1.66GHz desktop? by sconeu · · Score: 5

    A 1.66GHz chip in a desktop? Who in their right mind would need that kind of computing power?

    And nobody will need more than 640K RAM. Just ask Bill Gates.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  7. Re:1.66GHz desktop? by ActionListener · · Score: 5
    You obviously haven't used Divx;) :)

    Simply playing an MPEG4 movie (e.g., using the divx plugin for Windows media player) uses most of the CPU utilization of a 700 MHz Thunderbird. Creating a 2 hour long MPEG4 movie from a DVD extracted mpeg file takes about 10 hours an the same Thunderbird system. It would probably still take several hours even on a 1.6 GHz Athlon. There is the potential for a lot of cool applications if the compression could be done "live." However, even a 1.6 Athlon is not fast enough for this.

    So, I think a lot of people in their right mind need that kind of computing power. As audio/video compression gets better, the processing power required to encode and decode will likely continue to increase.

  8. Re:CPU Speeds (wrong) by MrBogus · · Score: 3

    There's two Moore's Laws.

    The first (the real one) was actually uttered by Moore and deals with transistor density. Boring.

    The second was concocted by Intel's marketing department and describes their past and future plans to entice you to buy a new product every couple years, guaranteeing them a nice revenue stream. The way it's usually described is Every 18 Months the performance/price of the CPU doubles. (Substitute Mhz for performance as necessary.)

    --

    When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
  9. CPU Speeds by OzJuggler · · Score: 4
    Dammit! It was only a month ago that I replaced my tired old P2-233 by building a NEW Pentium III 800MHz system. Now I read that in a few months you will be able to buy a 1.6 GHz CPU !!??? That's doubled in 4 months, not 18!

    And why is it that when I knock on Mr Moore's office I can hear some muffled whimpering but no-one answers the door? :)

    -Andrew.

    --
    Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)