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K7 Info
TBM writes "This is an article on the new K7 chipset from AMD. Pretty much all information that has been released to date and even rumors are included. Information on what mainboard manufacturers will be supporting the new slot-A and slot-B and which tier-1 OEMs will be selling K7 systems. A very useful read for anyone interested in a new system... "
1) Announce chip that will blow away Intel's top of line
2) Allow delivery date to slip
3) Finally deliver chip that doesn't meet expectations
4) Repeat
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Those "strange practices" are the best AMD can do. They have some excellent designs, but they just don't have the kind of production facilities intel does. Intel has something like 13 fabs. AMD has one. Plus, with this one fab they are making K6-2s, K6-IIIs, mobile K6-2s, mobile K6-IIIs, and now K7s (I believe the K7 chipsets are being made by a Taiwanese company). I'd like to see you do any better. Things will definately improve when AMD's massive new fab in Dresden, Germany is complete.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
Over in his Computex recap.
In it, he says that so far the K7 is looking like a "clear winner" and that for once, its floating point performance beats Intel's. He does, however, also mention that AMD has strange practices when it comes to production, and says they need to step it up it they want the K7's performance to be timely.
More of the facts than you probably think are true on that page. I tried to place question marks next to the questionable bits or otherwise mark them as rumour.
The bit about the PLL is 100% true, for example -- it's just that for some stuff like this, I cannot reveal my sources.
I can't *believe* that I forgot to mention anything regarding SMP. I mean, that was just *wrong* of me! I'll have to update the page in full force, though it might take a bit. I do recall that there is a company making very high SMP (for x86) chipsets for K7, but I keep thinking it's Profusion (the folks who are doing similar stuff on Intel's platform).
The company making for EV-6 could conceivably make specialized 8-way K7 a possibility for 1999, though it all depends on market demand, of course.
Oh...I think their name might have been Poseidon.
Anyway, that page is far from finished. It just covered a bunch of stuff that I think were important at the time, such as the concern over cost, exactly why the floating point unit is so fantastic, who might be supporting the platform. I even ignored MHz, since I'd basically assumed since November that the K7 would be coming out at 600MHz. I mean, wasn't it obvious?
-JC
PC News'n'Links
http://www.jc-news.com/pc
Probably the most accurate collection of information concerning the K7 on the net, but still largely based on hardcopy and heresay. Biostar, MSI and Gigabyte will be offering Irongate boards. Asus will as well, but will sit on the idea for a few months (typical Asus. Case and point: the P5A).
I'm not sure about the 500 MHz. I was pretty sure the first one would be a 550.
Also, concerning the "MHz" gap between the K6 and K7s: There WILL be a K6 550, so those of you with Super Socket 7 boards will not have to build up all new PCs (yet) to have an AMD with 550 Mhz speeds.
Another important factoid is that the K7 can be run in tandem....or more. At AMD they have a test machine with 4 K7s running NT. They only use 32MB of RAM in it to prove the lack of any sort of bottleneck in such a system. The x86 has come of age! Booo yeah.