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AMD Athlon (K7) Ships
Sir-Techlot writes "AMDs wed site has a page saying that the Athlon will be shipping today (6/23/99). Tells a bit of info we already know also. "
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can't wait to see some real benchmarks, interesting to see how it stands against p3 in real world gaming...
and looks like first post =]
Check out the prices -- I thought they would be a lot more expensive. I hope the motherboards are as reasonable. Ooooh, I gotta have one NOW!
Enhanced 3DNow! technology with new instructions to enable improved integer math calculations for speech or video encoding and improved data movement for Internet plug-ins and other streaming applications
Sure, it "makes" the Internet alive. It seems to me, that the marketing guys at AMD learning to copy their rivals techniques. I like their new CPU, but they have a long way to learn about marketing, something Intel (and MSFT) do very well.
Look at their FAQ, they love this word so much, that even TMed it in every other line! Well, not really every, it seems they had no specific pattern in mind, or there were few people making the FAQ, one of which was way too font of this idea, and the other was probably about to get redundant.
Just a thought.
all i wanna know is how fast it
will compile my 2.2.10 kernel.
and..
how many fps can i get in quake.
The really interesting questions is whether it is possible to overclock 500Mhz to get 600Mhz, I suspect it may work and AMD will get a big blow to their plans to offer premium product.
Resistance fading. Credit card coming out.
Must buy AMD k7! Mmmmm AMD!
Does that mean AMD beat Intel at releasing a 600mhz processor?
If it did, that's pretty cool.
The price war between AMD and Intel is gonna be even more interesting now...
Too bad Cyrix died. I guess they couldn't have kept up anyway. I wonder why they didn't even try releasing Jalapeno.
Hmm.. but then it may be possible to overclock the 600mhz up even higher. Mmmm 700mhz....
Actually if you have a look at their reply dedicated to their pricing strategy you will note:
.18 chips very good in volume.
The strategy is not based on any specific percentage relationship with Intel products.
Obviously they do NOT want a price war, because they really need to charge premium to invest into K8 etc. However, Intel obviously doesn't want it, so in theory the price war will start. However, there is chance, that there will be no war, unless Intel has something better to offer. AMD may have finally achieved their desired goal to offer superior product and get some decent money. Let's not see what Intel has to reply. I would not bet on AMD too much, as Intel has no problems with capasity, and will manufacture
As others have noted, the FAQ tells of the prices per 1000 (note the price for the 500 Mhz one). So I wondered over to PriceWatch to check on the K6-III/500.
:)
Of course the retailers will mark up the price a bit from the one in the FAQ. I'd say it would start at $399-425. But to have it cheaper, or damn close to the price of the K6-III? Damn sweet for us, but what is AMD thinking?
Ummm...
If AMD doesn't exist, do you think Intel will pass on those 30% savings that it realizes by going to 300 mm(nm?) wafers to the consumer?
Somehow I doubt it.
Either way, I'm rooting for AMD.. and I love the prospect of a dual-athlon system. I think they should market it as the Biathlon.
I don't like those funky new ATX cases. Plus I just
bought a new AT case. Hope I can use the AT case
for the K7 (or whatever the hell they call it.)
Intel says there will be a delay of about two months in the product launch of the Intel® Pentium® III processor based on 0.18 micron technology that operates at 600 megahertz (MHz) and above (commonly referred to by its former code name, "Coppermine"). The new chip is engineered by Intel for desktop PC applications. The company says a 600-plus MHz Pentium III processor based on 0.25 micron technology will be available to its customers.
Mobile and small form-factor versions of coppermine will be introduced on time, but in 500-MHz versions, rather than the originally targeted 600 MHz.
The company says that acceptance of the Intel Pentium III processor remains ahead of expectations, and that 0.25-micron manufacturing process continues to deliver better-than-expected yields at higher-than-expected frequencies. This has allowed for the acceleration of price cuts on this new generation processor.
The company also says it is confident that it has an outstanding product lineup for the second half of 1999, including a new series of chipsets designed to capitalize on the power of the new Intel Pentium III line of products.
Actually Intel has won already. Winning in this market is not defined by finishing off your competitor, in this case Intel would be subject to anti-monopoly regulations (ok, it's now a monopoly, but without ANY competitor even their liers, pardon, lwers won't be able to prove it otherwise). Hence, Intel's strategy is to keep AMD barely alive, while charging premium on their products. Very nicely fit strategy I think, something they really fear is that AMD might be gone! In this case I wouldn't be surprised to see some "third" party cash injections into AMD to save it. In either case, consumers win, as competition more or less exists :-)
You do have a point. If Microsoft didn't make that "investment" in Apple when they (Apple) would probably be out of business today. The terms of the deal were very favorable to Microsoft, Apple had to ship with IE, etc .. It basically kept Apple alive but in a cage. Intel could do the same by making AMD use Intel fabs and use Intel controlers/mobo/and so on for a cash injection from Intel. This would cage up AMD the same way Microsoft caged up Apple.
Arent p3's 600 $450 and 500 $380.
Their telomeres are very, very short
Is this thing 64bit? I hear that it will work on the same motherboard (newer ones)as the Alpha. If this is true then It can't be x86...or can it. Just to give me a idea of the processor would I compile my kernel on it as a i686 or alpha? One last thing if this processor isn't 64bit...then won't intel crush AMD once they come out with there 64bit processor. Sorry I seem so dumb.
not all of the benchmarks were disappointing:
0 15
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990611S0
(this is not a third party benchmark though)
Good Luck AMD! As another poster noted, AMD may not survive the year. According to this article, it is predicted to announce a $200M loss for the past fiscal quarter (note: consider the source of the article). AMD is getting killed by the the celeron, and the low profit margin of their chips. They really need a winner.
The athlon/K7 changes this, maybe. If the specs are correct, this cpu will be smoking (figuratively, not literally). And, IBM has announced support for the athlon and will be selling aptivas with them. Of course, IBM has not done especially well in the PC market.
I do wonder how worried Intel is over this cpu. The PIII aren't setting the world on fire, and their new coppermine chip is being delayed. I do not have to mention what the status of the merced is. However, Intel like MS has marketing clout and $$ to spend towards this. IIRC, someone wrote that Intel's budget for promoting the PIII was $200M.
Bottom line is that competition is good. Now if only the G4's start showing up.
RTFF
I wanna those chips...
(okay so if I have to get 1000 of them, i guess i just have to collect more pennies.....*g*)
The company I'm surprised hasn't gotten into this deeper is IBM. They have both the capability and the deep pockets to compete head-to-head with Intel if they want to. It could still happen.
IBM has had several run-ins with the DOJ and FTC during it's long history. IMHO Big Blue has done a skillful job of keeping a relatively low profile in the technology market. IBM licenses their technology to every hard drive manufacter. IBM licenses their fabrication technology to almost every chip manufacturer.
If they wanted to, IBM could probably wrest substantial market share from (one at a time) Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, Cadence, or any hard drive manufacturer. But why bother when the DOJ/FTC is doing it for you?
There's no reason to believe the IA64 will succeed any better than any of Intel's other attempts to break away from the x86 architecture. A more likely scenario is the IA64 fizzling + dying, the Alpha or a Power-derivative taking over the high end of the market, and AMD taking over the consumer x86 market.
They need to succeed with this chip..
1. AMD has financial problems. Might not survive this year
2. K7 prices are that much if you order 1000 of them
3. K7 is targetted for server market. To get this they cant just make a good chip. It has to be proven so PHBs buy it.
---------------
And to prove the 3rd point:
In my work we got a PHB, he decided getting for a freakin file server a p3 500, 256 ram... For a fileserver I repeat.... when I tried to talk to him into AMD k6-2 for price/performance ratio.. He said no.. and no..we are not a rich company..we have ISDN, the best workstation is a p166 w32ram, 4gig... normal ones are p133 16ram 2gig HD... so my boss is blowing for a file server (internal) as much as he could buy a server and a decent workstation:
(hell I got my k6-2 350, 128ram, motherb, case for 500$ canadian.. the chip overclocked to 400mhz, no crashes)...but no... his reasoning was that no one *ELSE* did AMD...
The current K7 fabs are .25. The new plant (I think in Germany) is .18 and they are already making the .18 dies.
This will be competition! YES YES YES!!!!!
you're on crack, stop talking shit and come back when you have half a clue what you're talking about. K7 uses Slot A NOT Socket 7, and have you even seen any of the benchmarks on the preliminary silicon chips ?
It has been said here that the 600 MHz Athlon should approximately equal the PIII 700 MHz. That says to me that the Athlon is faster. Besides, AMD rocks!!
It does not matter that they are shipping today,
because they are shipping to manufacturers.
I'll start to care when I can get one in my
grubby little hands, but until then,
the chip does not exist as far as I'm concerned.
will drop all it's prices.
the greatest thing to ever happen to X86 market
and by live long dream of seeing Intel in second place is here at last.
Next on the list :
The end of mircoshit !!!
but w'll miss bill for all the bull shit software that makes IT people rich !!!
AMD lost $1 billion last year.
We know from an earlier slashdot article that they will lose about $200 million Q1 1999
They will make back some of that from selling a part off (I forgot which part, might have been done by now), and tax/accounting tricks.
We need to support AMD to keep it going so chip development will continue at a rapid pace.
He/she never said that. They were talking about new untried (at that stage) architectures, like the K7 chipsets are now.
Nah. Their chip division is the only thing making them money right now. They'll just split that off (sell to Compaq possibly?) before AMD goes completely under.
AMD needs to hit Cluetrain and take what they have to say there to heart. The only thing I learned on the AMD site is how much a manufacturer can expect to pay in lots of 1000 (And that it'd probably cost about the same to buy two 500's and an SMP motherboard as it would to buy a 600.)
I want nice solid technical information/ I want to know who's selling SMP motherboards now. I want to know where I can get 200 MhZ RAM for the system. I want to know where I can get a couple of chips. I want some real figures on the alleged floating point performance. I want a comparason not only against the Pentium III but also against the G3 PowerPC and the top of the line Alpha. I want to know the price per MIPs break down. I do not want this marketing fluff. If I wanted fluff, I'd be buying Wintel. Just who are they trying to attract with this crap, anyway? The dead end luser doesn't care what chip's in his computer, his bottom line is the price tag. The PHB will still buy intel because they have some Pavolian brand-name drool sequence going. That leaves us technical users and this sort of thing just pisses us off.
Wake up, AMD!
...but will the IA64 be adaptable for use as an embedded controller? If so, then it will live, if only in ignomious surroundings...
But it runs on the same hardware than alpha. You will have to compile for i686.
Intel's first 64 bits processor (Merced) is not likely to come out till H2 2000, and all reports I've read mentioned very poor performance and very high production costs.
McKinley, the 2nd generation IA64 should be more successful, but we are talking about 2001/2002, and it would be very surprising if AMD doesn't have a competing product by the time (K8 is already in development).
That of course leads to the question, will Alpha CPUs run on the upcoming K7 Motherboards? Hopefully this will mean that one could knock together a moderatly cheap Alpha work station.
SCOTT YOU SLIMY ASS BASTARD HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?
Havent seen you in a long long time
-Stan
IA64 is going to be binary compatible with the x86 architecture.
The Bi-athlon?
Why would you need to do that? The last time I shut my computer off was when I moved it across town.. granted, I haven't turned it back on yet.. laptops are much quieter than my midtower PC. ;-)
> Your "150+" was, I believe, a 120MHz chip, so comparing a 150+ to a 120 is a fair comparison...
This is correct. Actually it's not a fair comparison if it's advertised as being as good as a P150 (PR-150+). For me performance is 90% about FPU performance. I program realtime softsynths and other very FPU intensive stuff on my spare time. So if this is the first chip that is doing floating point faster than an Intel I am going to buy it. BTW, I'm running Linux, of course, and Quake 3 is supposed to support SMP so the dual K7 looks really good.
I was just mentioning that in the past there have been claims that processors are faster than Intel's but the truth has been that for the stuff I do Intel's processors have been better. I sincerely hope that the Athlon will be an exception.
If it is going to cost that much I might as well just buy an Ultrasparc!
Good rule of thumb - never buy the first generation of a new processor architecture. :) K6, Pentium. Enough said. Both of these had bugs in them when first released, the second versions of both not only fixed the bugs but realized considerable performance optimizations.
Not to mention that first generation anything generally sells for about twice or more of what it will sell for later... But then again, if you have money to burn...
I like AMD just fine... but they're in pretty dire financial condition, so it might be best to remember that they probably ramped the Athlon out into production as quickly as they could. I very much hope they got all the bugs out, since I'd like to see AMD do well, but... I'm not going to risk investing in one until I'm sure.
OS/2 was a far better OS than Win95 at the time.. unfortunately it died because it lacked:
a) Support from IBM!
b) Applications.. Microsoft made a mucho run to make sure EVERYBODY stopped writing Win 3.1 apps and started writing Win95 only apps.
c) driver/hardware support
Basically OS/2 was in the same boat Linux was in a few years ago.. the difference is Linux is opensource... it doesn't NEED to only rely on support from one company to improve and promote it!
From the way I understand it (after reading the faq) the L2 cache for the k7 is on the chip initially available with 512k and scalable to 8mb
Wouldn't surprise me if the made boards with cache to though look at k6-3 mb cache is L3 cache
It's just too bad your a dumbass. Trying to sound smart, but forgetting that the AMD Athlon processor is oh, I dunno, 40% faster than a PIII in floating point.
--Dumbass!
be glad someone in this company actually goes around reading this stuff ;)
we cant give away all our secrets ;)
just a little tidbit....
the 200 MHZ is for the BUS MORON
THAT IS BETWEEN THE CHIP AND THE MOTHERBOARD!!!
hehe, i work for AMD :)
Some of us remember a time when you COULDN'T buy an Intel based x86... We have some reason to rant......
(Ooops, above post a mistake)
Some of us remember a time when you COULDN'T buy a NON Intel based x86... We have some reason to rant......
I guarantee you AMD isn't using asynchronous logic. It's all clocked, in the sense that an add result may settle sooner, but it won't be used until the clock strikes.
Greek names bad for sales. Even the Simpsons could tell ya that (Powell Motors and their Persephone, for example...) ;-)
The K7's are slot A.
The 21164's are socket thingies.
The 21264's are slot B.
Until the slot B K7's appear, dream on.
When they do, you'll need to change the BIOS
with the processor, so dream on still.
Interesting... depending on the processor or maybe a jumper setting, start at a different firmware address, and execute the proper instructions, right? This would be much better than having to put in a different ROM chip, and finding that you can't get one for the other processor type when you want to switch.
No, Slot-A is what Alphas have *been* running on. Slot-B is the new standard for both the K7 and the just-coming-out Alphas.
Just because one is RISC and the other is x86 doesn't mean they can't be *hardware* compatible. It just makes them *software* incompatible. I thought this was explained in the article which sparked this entire discussion?
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-- Guges --
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Ah. I misunderstood you a bit.
Yes, it is definitely apples and oranges to compare the 512k half speed cache Athlons (notably, the only ones we have prices for so far) to a Xeon, and it was slightly misleading of Dirk (side note: Dirk? Who the hell names their kid Dirk?? Hmm...perhaps he let his parents pick the name for the new chip??) to note that the K7 whups the Xeon in SPECint and SPECfp, and thereby imply that it's an adequate replacement.
OTOH, the Xeon's fat cache does help it along on these benchmarks (compared to a plain old PIII), and lots of people do use the Xeon in workstations, doing the sorts of thing that SPEC benchmarks should approximate reasonably well.
Still, for a big database, there's no substitute for a huge fast cache; a 2MB Xeon should run circles around a $700 Athlon-600.
Look, as suave, and cool as the K7 may seem, I really dont think it will be able to stand up to the p2|3 at all. Its kind of like the celeron for the p3, a cheap, sorta-comprable chip, that geeks can overclock and fry. AMD will always be the low end chips, unless it starts making something drasticly new. And with p2 prices dropping as we speak, I expect to see more people shelling out 100 bux for a p2 400 than more for a k7 400. And with the interchangablity of the p2 and p3 on recent mobos, once the p3 prices drop, people will buy those. In all honesty, how many of us will be able to FIND Sockey 7 mother boards in a year or so? Vendors are just going to stop making outdated technology. I for one, dont have any problems with Intel monopolizing the desktop|server chip market, Intel is a GOOD company, and AMD just wont be able to take them on .
I've run the Distributed.net client on several machines, including a pentiumII 300, celeron 333 and amd k6-2 350.
Stats:
k6-2 350 - avg 600K keys/sec
p2-300 - avg 800k keys/sec
celeron-333 - avg 900K keys/sec
the amd box is the least used of them all. They are each online 24/7 and running win95 or nt4.
To give amd credit, it beats both intel comps in the des key rate.
I don't know if this is the best benchmark, but it is another to choose from.
Maybe rc5 hasn't been optimized enough for the adm... but this is what I've seen.
Anyone know when the chips and boards will be available?
I have not seen anything on their site, will it be possible (and when) to use Athlon in laptops? It seems to me that in this area (in which Intel is goind to make a big stress), AMD is lagging behind. Real competion in mobile CPU market (and falling prices!) is what I really want to see!
Perhaps they think it is like the Alpha, which was manufactured by the Digital Equipment Corporation. That would make it the DEC-athlon!
Okay, I should go to sleep now.
The new Alphas and the AMD K7 share a bus format now, so that they can use the same motherboards. The new interface is called Slot-B. API is hoping that the K7's will sell well enough to drive the prices of the motherboards down, giving Alpha a cheap motherboard to provide their processor on (the lack of which has hurt them in the past), while AMD gets multiprocessor capability out of it, the lack of which has hurt *them* in the past. Intel owns the SMP protocol used in other x86 motherboards, and AMD could not use it in their processors. AMD defined its own multiprocessor specification, but they never convinced any motherboard manufacturer to build a motherboard to that specification. So while AMD processors were technicially capable of SMP, they were effectively confined to the single-processor (ie, low-end) market. But now they have an SMP specification *not* owned by Intel which motherboard manufacturers *are* willing to produce. So if the new systems sell well, both companies win.
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It was frustrating to see 533MHz 21164PC processors for $499, massively overpowering the most powerful x86 processors at the time, and for so much cheaper, but being stuck with the cheapest Alpha motherboard being the $300 164SX. The extra price of the motherboard ate up the price:performance benefit of going Alpha. If the low-end models of the Slot-B motherboards go for $100, and the new shrunk 21164PC (the low die area, low cost version of the previous generation Alpha) sells for $180 at 800MHz as it is rumored, then API will have all the ingredients for a completely hot shit $600 consumer PC.
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-- Guges --
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If you can get a DUAL 500 MHz for the same price ? I wonder if these are as overclockable as Celerons... 500->600 is only a 20% increase in clock frequency a lot less than 300->450 for the Celerons, which was a 50% increase.
If the FPU is faster for DSP, graphics and games than Intel's I'll buy it, otherwise not. I'm tired of everyone saying how their processor beats Intel, I'm not going to buy it before some objective proof. Cyrix was always faster than Intel... Quake sucked on my Cx-PR150+, and it was fine on a P120.
Don't get me wrong, the K7 (Athlon) sounds like an incredible chip and is sure to make AMD some money, but is it enough to save the company? If you read AMD's press release today you know that they have larger than expected loses(200 million), so they need this chip be their cash cow. The problem is that they destroyed the market that they are shooting for with the K7(Computers between $1,299 & $2,599 USD) by selling those damned K6. The K6 (all the other low end chips) created a huge sub $1000 computer market. Why is the average consumer going to spend $2,000 for a machine when they(in their eyes) can get a compuer that does the same for under $600 from eMachines? They need to make a ton of money with this chip and I don't think the market is really there. They tried using the Christensen effect to beat Intel and it bit them in the ass. And I think Intel is looking more into the future by developing the advanced 0.13 micron technology and 300mm waffers(This will give them a cost saving of 30% alone). In the long term (3-5) Intel will win because AMD is spending all their resources (and then some) to beat Intel in the near term with their K7. Just my .02 cents. :)
So does anyone know if anyone is paying attention to this on the Linux kernel development to get support for SMP working with the EV6 multiprocessor technologies? As I understand it, on the Intel architecture, only Intel's MP spec is supported. Does the Alpha port support this MP spec and would it be easy to port over to Intel arch?
The answer's probably more complex than you'd like. For integer/pointer operations, the K7's supposed to be faster than the PIII at same clock rate. For floating-point it's supposed to be a little worse. On the *other* hand, the K7 will use PC133 SDRAMs and a 200MHz L3 cache, while the PIII will remain with the 100MHz memory bus for a while yet, and the K7 uses a memory bus twice as wide (128 bits) as the PIII's, *and* the K7 has larger caches and a larger TLB on top of it. So if you're looking at the system as a whole, the K7-based *systems* should outperform PIII-based *systems* hands-down. Even floatingpoint-intensive algorithms bang on the memory bus, and any weakness in the K7's floating point unit will be more than offset by the lower memory latency and higher memory bandwidth.
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-- Guges --
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Err...a damned good one.
First off, there's the 128k of L1 (4x that of every Intel P6, including the Xeon).
But, of course, what you're implying here is that the K7 can't run with the Xeon because the Xeon has up to 2MB of L2-cache--very important for, well, server type stuff (big databases, etc.)--and, most ominously, it runs at the same speed as the CPU (for comparison, the PII/PIII has 512k running at half speed; the Celeron has only 128k but it's full speed...and they're about as fast at equal clock speeds, depending on what you're running).
Well, the K7's that shipped today only have 512k of L2, and that only at half clock speed...
However, AMD plans on shipping K7's with both half and full speed L2-caches, ranging in size from the aforementioned 512k all the way up to an absopositively humongous 8MB.
Wow.
Of course, it's gonna cost AMD a chunk of change to fab a chip with 8MB of full-speed L2-cache ( Wow ), but if you think they're gonna be tacking on the same exorbitant markups that Intel sticks on the Xeon (a PIII Xeon w/2MB L2 is $3400 at pricewatch)...well, I sorta doubt it.
But, you may stammer, the Xeon is better for SMP?
Hardly. The Xeon, while technically capable of up to 8-way SMP, only sells in 1, 2, and 4-way configurations so far (I think). 8-way K7's should be up and selling quite soon, and I've heard talk of a 16-way chipset. Oh, and if you're wondering why no one's bothered to make an 8-way Xeon box, it's because the communication between the chips in a multichip Xeon server has to go through the 100Mhz system bus; not only is 100Mhz not so fast, but adding chips means less bus bandwidth for everything else. Long story short, you don't get anywhere near linear performance gains by adding Xeons, and in fact an 8-way box might not be any faster than a 4-way. Luckily, the K7 fixes that little problem by providing a dedicated path for the chips to communicate to each other.
So unless AMD has problems fabbing such massive caches, it looks as though the Xeon's in a bit of trouble...
i heard they were going to release SMP later? but when? :-)
i ll be forced to go with intel for this summer! =(
---
HAHAHAHA...that was pretty funny.
Everything I'd read about the K7 was that it was designed from the ground up as a high clock rate chip. At first I thought this was pure marketing bunk...that all fast chips were "designed for high clock rates". More reading revealed I wasn't totally right. Basically, the chip was built to be more forgiving to higher clock rates, with higher cache latencies and the like. Sorry for my vagueness, but apparently the K6 was designed with minimum cache latency, making it do a lot per clock cycle, but at the same time making it very unforgiving to slight manufacturing defects and high speeds. So it looks like the K7 should be pretty o/c'able. Also dont forget that the later .25 um chips should be more oc'able, as they refine the fab process, and of course they should go through the roof when both of amd's fabs go .18u.
you have to cool to be able to overclock or else the heat will crash it. FWIW one of the guys from Kyrotech died a few days later from alcohol poisoning due to overcelebration, which is a real bummer -- he will be missed
when the k6-3s were being announced i often could find mail order houses selling them for 30% less than the price given by AMD. i'm not all too sure how true this will hold with a high end chip like the k7(why a fakey name?).
all amd makes is the chip and a chipset, what you need to do is drop an email to your favorite motherboard maker letting them know your concern.
they would probably know
If AMD fails, let's look at the alternatives we'll have left, besides Intel:
* Alphas - a viable alternative, and what my next investment will be if the K7....err.. Athlon doesn't work out.
* Cyrix/IBM - low-end, nothing new from them.
* IDT (Winchip) - low-end, nothing new.
* Transmeta - nothing released yet.
* Sun/HP/others - too expensive
* PowerPC - requires purchase of an entire (usually mac) computer. Or is there a motherboard and CPU I can get separately?
I do not 'hate' Intel (My current CPU is an Intel P200MMX), but an Intel only future for the majority of us is NOT rosy in my eyes.
With all of the pre-release (disappointing) K7 benchmarks floating out there I can hardly wait to get my hands on a K7 to test it thoroughly... AMD, are you listening?
From the information released so far about its internal architecture it should be a scorcher, but only extensive testing will tell the real story.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
Posted by 2B||!2B:
Athlon sounds like either a tennis shoe or an anti-fungus foot powder. But we forgive them if it rocks!
Hee... :P
Ok, I have couple little tidbits to share. First of all, those prices are really closer to what us resellers will be getting them at. Expect $25-50 more from a legit store. You can also exspect that price or probably less from the stores on pricewatch, because they are stolen or not manafactured of they dont deliver. I am not going to tell you where to buy your chips, but just look at the places on pricewatch. A 15 day warrantee? That is obviously not an authorized chip, all AMD chips come with a 3year manafactures warantee, same with Intel. Its no wonder they are cheaper then what us legit resellers can get from our distributors. So when you go out to buy your next chip think about whether you want to save a couple bucks or spend a little more to get a high quality and warenteed product.
Also, comparing K7's to P3's is not realistic. The real comparison is closer to Xeons to K7. And the K7 is faster then any current Intel chip. The pricing is also cheap, considering that it was rumored to cost as much as Xeons do, in the thousands. So be happy.
Anyway, thats all. Good Day.
Jeff Knox
Find Motherboards now! stop.
Over and out
If I ever quit my present job and work on microprocessor circuits I'll do my best to kill names like Pentium or Celeron or Athlon and stuff. They all sound either very similar or just aren't very beefy sounding. They sound like they're picked by focus groups. I hate focus groups.
Instead I'll pick names that are more in your face, much like 60's and 70's sports cars. These chips are powerful and they suck up as much power as old sports cars suck up gas. They deserve names with guts. Names like the Vindicator, maybe with performance specs right in the title, the way sports cars used to proudly display their number of cylinders and engine displacement. The Vindicator 128 1 gig.
Forget dancing femme-boys in gold lame bunny suits, open up a early 70's Popular Mechanics sometime. Thats how advertising should be. Scantily clad girls draped across the vehicle. Chips are small, there won't be any draping across them. Maybe a gorgeous blonde in a string bikini. The camera pans in to her feet and slowly makes its way up her body. Caressing every last inch of her perfect legs and thighs. Just above the bikini line is the chip. Slowly the camera zooms and focuses in on the chip and its name. The Vindicator 128 1 gig. Fade out. No text, no boring announcers. Maybe the wa-wa guitar track from a porno flick. The viewer knows if he buys one of these babies he's getting some!
Ah well, maybe not. The management didn't think adding tesla coils, jacobs ladders and a full height lava lamp to our big servers was a good idea. Even after I explained the concept of retro-computing.
From my mail to AMD:
Just a quick note on the new name for the K7 processor -- Ugh! One of the many things I liked about AMD was the focus on giving better performance at less cost. Part of this was the avoidance of silly marketing techniques such as the use of a semi-random conglomeration of masculine phonemes as a product name. By choosing "Athlon" you have clearly identified your product as a Pentium-Merced-Celeron knockoff. (Besides, why would you want a name that has connotations of scrawny marathon runners?) The notion that it's easier to differentiate the "Athlon" processor generation from the "K6" as opposed to "K7" from "K6" is pure goofiness. I hope that you continue to use "K7" (at least as a subtitle) in your marketing and sales, and I look forward to the K8.
I'll buy one (esp at those great prices!), but I don't think I'll be putting an "Athlon Inside" sticker on my case anytime soon...
I think not...(*poof*)
I don't understand why everyone is so excited. We already have Alphas that are far faster than this, and have better price/performance in the high end. x86 is outdated, outmoded, and deserves to die. Why not use something better? Alphas are cost-effective and fast. There are also fast Sparcs, but they're more expensive so I can understand the resistance there.
I am not surprised that AMD decided not to sell this chip as the "K7". Why? Simple: they think that they really have something on their hands this time around. They want a trademarkable name to prevent anyone from trying to make "knock-off" K7's! This is exactly the reason that Intel called the 586 the "Pentium" -- so that AMD and Cyrix couldn't sell their designs with the same name. Intel tried to trademark "586", but the courts said that it was too generic to own. I expect that "K7" is no different.
So AMD now thinks that, with this chip, they can crawl out from under Intel, and become a dominant player. So dominant, that they fear AMD clones.
What happens when the clones get cloned?
--Lenny (who likes AMD)
So the K7 is faster then the Xeon at SPECint, and much faster for SPECfp. When multi-processor chipsets come out it will in all likelyhood be far faster then the MP Xeon (thanks to DECs point to point "bus" design). The K7 can eventually beat the Xeon's L2 cache size and match the speed (note that the SPEC numbers are better with a worse L2 cache, I assume due to the far better L1 cache, and a more agressave OOO engine).
So far things are better for AMD then I recall them ever being. However each time AMD had a CPU that could threaten Intel they have had problems making enough of them. Will things really be better this time?
From reading AMDs press release there are a few clues. They will not be selling their CPUs at a fixed discount from the similar Intel ones. They listed a bunch of reasons, but I susspect a big one is they will adjust price to reflect yeild. They also keep talking about the K7 gunning for the high-end market (after all the K6 will not be discontinued for quite some time!). The profit per chip is far higher there, fewer chips will have to be sold to earn the big bucks.
The downside of corse is many K7 systems won't be signifigantly cheeper then the Intel Xenon systems (or so I assume). We may even see the MP K7 systems costing more then the Xenon, after all it will in all likelyhood be a much faster beast.
The upside is Intel may be forced to cut Xenon prices, and in any even when Intel starts beating the K7 there will be more price cuts (and AMD's new fab plant may help them manage volume shipments for once)
This probably refers to the use of processor cartridges, like the Pentium II and III have. Meanwhile, Intel is moving its processors back to sockets...
> A 15 day warrantee? That is obviously not an
> authorized chip, all AMD chips come with a 3year > manafactures warantee, same with Intel. Its no
> wonder they are cheaper then what us legit
> resellers can get from our distributors.
Huh? The 15 and 30 day warranties are for OEM chips bought in bulk from chip brokers. The idea is that AMD (or Intel, or Samsung, whoever) will sell you a chip with no packaging, very little warranty, and no support for a discounted rate. The 3 year warranty is for AMD boxed retail only. There is a 1 year warranty for end-users who buy direct from AMD, and a 30 day OEM.
This is standard practice in the wholesale computer parts business. And it is perfectly legit. You just have to buy in bulk and have the right suppliers, not Ingram Micro..
jf
They were just thinking ahead. If this chip was the K7, the next one would be the K8. And what about the chip after that? It would have to be called the K9. Insert your own joke here.
Well, they need a name so they can put a trademark on it. If you notice, every time AMD says Athlon, they put TM all over the place. Plus they wanted to make this CPU sound different. Call it what you want, but Athlon should be fine.
I'm just hoping that you were ... ummm, being humourous in the above post. (It's hard to tell sometimes around here.) In case you weren't:
:)
1) The K6-3 is approximately equivalent to a same-clock *Xeon* on 32-bit integer code. Floating-point? Not a chance, but what does a file server care about floating point?
2) I've *easily* run 30 people off of a K6-266 running Linux/Samba. The machine didn't even really get warm, much less break a sweat. Load average was about 0.1 most days, and while these weren't software developers, they weren't watching their screensavers all day, either. Anything over 200Mhz for a fileserver is a genuine waste unless you have a serious disk subsystem and a well-built high-speed network.
So, either I need to get a sense of humor or you need to get a clue.
The word is that the chip only goes to OEMs for a while -- you'll have to buy a whole computer with an Athlon inside for the near future. Those whole systems start shipping in August (?), and it'll be some time after that before the CPUs and motherboards make it to the retail channel. Sorry -- I wish they were here sooner, too.
The simple answer: K7 (Athlon). Far and away.
The real figures are about 12% faster in SpecInt95, and about 50% faster in SpecFP95. That's comparing a P3-550 versus an Athlon-550. For the P3 Xeon-550, the Athlon beats it by about 5% in integer, and 40% in floating point.
If you want the full Athlon story, go to JC's page. More Athlon info than you ever wanted to know, including the above spec numbers and where they were obtained.
The K7 is a home user and server chip. Basicially the home user chip will have the lowest amount of cache and speed of the cache. The server chips will have a few megs of cache at faster speeds. Similar to Intel's strategy witht he Xeon and PII.
-----
I've been looking on both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware for any article relating to the K7 being compatible with alpha boards and vice versa. Is this just rumors or is it true? Any articles relating to this? I know that they share the same bus, but as far as I know alphas arn't slots but socket chips (but I could be wrong).
Thanks
The management didn't think adding tesla coils, jacobs ladders and a full height lava lamp to our big servers was a good idea. Even after I explained the concept of retro-computing.
Jacob's ladder? Is that the "bzzzt" thing?
Mmmm. Now that's a real computer. Where can I buy one? Does it also come with programming that goes wrong so it falls in love with its creator and tries to take over the world?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Oh yeah? What sort of cache does the K7 have?
(There's a reason that the old Pro-200s can out benchmark a standard Pentium III. Of course, it depends if you are running Quake or databases)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I guess my point was not that it was difficult/impossible, just unlikely in the low-end motherboard market.
Merged firmware would be great though - I would love an x86 PC with a real boot firmware setup. Once you start adding lots of controllers and drives, the over-extended PC BIOS starts showing it's age.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I don't think consumers are getting the point. Each piece of equipment only holds the value of it's usability. I specifically love Linux for it's ability to breathe new life into older equipment. I've also got an AMD-K6-2 350 running linux, and i am very impressed. If AMD can beat Intel's performance pound-for-pound for a FRACTION of the price...well, nuff said.
:)
Oh yeah...when's the last time you rebooted?
errittus
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
does anyone know where i can get some info on optimizing for this processor? also, i'd like to know what these new integer instructions are in 3DNow.
stay frosty and alert
Flamebait? Why did that get marked flamebait? It might not have been a very original statement, and First Post Syndrome is always obnoxious, but how does it qualify as Flamebait?
Uhhh....no. Intel has been leadin the chip industry for too much time to just disappear.
It also pisses me off when I see posts that are so anti-intel that they are nearly bursting with energy to rant. The next time you want to rant about Intel, count to ten, turn your computer off, and walk away. Who cares if Intel makes their chips expensive, don't buy them, you have that ability. Stop being anti-everything monkeys, it just makes you closed minded. Intel has advantages and so does AMD, use whatever works best for your situation or your checkbook. Making up your mind to like one company or one product makes you overlook anything produced by another company, even if it is a better product. Think before you rant.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
the EV6 is a point to point bus, unlike the bus used by intel. this means that while the processor can run at 200MHz, the ram is not required to, so the only thing that matters is what speed of ram the bios supports (eg. 100 or 133 or whatever). this also affects things like the pci and agp bus too: they are independent from the FSB, and run at whatever speed the chipset allows.
someone correct me if i'm wrong about anything.
Well, jeez... I REALLY, REALLY want one of these to replace my aging P-II 333. I wonder if my boss would buy me one? [Tongue heavily in cheek, as I work for Intel.]
On a [slightly] more serious note: What does this say for Intel that the K7... er... Athlon, is supposedly (can't wait for real world benchmarks) faster than an equal megahertz Pentium 3, that it's available in higher megahertz, and it's cheaper (at higher megahertz) than the Pentium 3? Hmmm... Maybe I should change employers to AMD?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Anyone have any idea on whether AMD and Alpha might merge the way PA-RISC and IA did? Would this be technologically and economically feasible/practical? The use of a motherboard standard between the two is interesting.
It has to do with AMD competing with Intel for the high-end x86 market. In the near future, this would include a 64-bit chip.
That's what I'm talking about. the IA-64 will be Intel's next-gen of high-performance chips. It only seems logical that AMD would want to do the same thing.
Assuming the entire chip operates synchronously (meaning every circuit depends entirely on the clock), you would be correct. But I've always had the notion that asynchronous circuit design, even with its major pitfalls, has the potential to work slightly faster than synchronous circuits. If AMD has been able to harness asynchronous circuits at extremely high speed then it would make perfect sense that the processor would operate faster internally. The external bus speed, however, would remain unchanged.
What does the Alpha have to do with any of Intel's internal specs?
Why just dual, go all the way with 16 way smp! That would make for an interesting box. I'm wondering who is going to make one for us DIY'ers, any one know? Also with 8mb cache support makes me wonder if there will be a mb with 8mb built on.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
From what I have heard is that the 600 is only stable upto 700mhz.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
In every aspect of speed, the answer is the K7. I haven't found this out first hand yet, but I think it's safe to say this as of right now.
Check out the prices, they aren't half bad.
600mhz - $699
550mhz - $479
500mhz - $324
Also, from browsing the AMD website, I came across this K7 FAQ. It's actually pretty interesting and gives some new information.
Check out the Athlon logo. There is the number 7 hidden in it. Seems like an AMD artist wanted to send a message.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
I was talking about stability of the whole architecture (CPU + Motherboard/chipset + Video card combination) FOR 3D Gaming. All I was saying was this new untested combo might not perform at its best during the first 8 omnths or so, because there is lots of work that has to be done on chipset side and drivers side to make this work well for 3D gaming (K6-2 optimized RivaTNT video drivers shipped only a month ago, although the card existed for a while already), heck even the software developers might have to do K7 specific tweaks to for better performance, better compilers, etc ..
If you play games a lot, don't buy K7 now.. Why?
Because there is no a tested motherboard and chipset for it, you are not guaranteed that your prefered 3D video card will work without crashes.
Don't get me wrong. I talk from experience. When the first super 7 (socket) motherboards appeared they were as unstable as hell at doing 3D stuff. They supported AGP but once you pushed them hard the system would just freeze or your game would not run. It took about a year of waiting until decent Super 7 motherboards apperared that would actually work with AGP 3D accellerators without your game/system freezing. Even right now, Super7 motherboards still have issues with my latest and fastest 3D cards. Even at faster CPU clocks speeds
AMD would systems would get lower fps than Celeron systems while both using the same TNT video card.
But if you don't play a lot I guess it is a nice number cruncher for server or compiling kernels...
The K7 is finally out. This is great news. I was going to buy a K6-3 but decieded to wait for the K7 because it was so close.
But the question now is: When do we see good motherboards with decent chipsets? Until then, the CPU is pretty much worthless to me.
Any thoughts?
Quack
So they are planing on Q3 roll out. Well, 7 more days and Q3 will be here. But, Q3 also lasts 3 months >:(
Anyone have a guess when the home tweaker can get one? I love to get one just to play with it.
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
BTW: Looks like Athlon will just have the standard 3DNow! instruction set. No "Athlon New Instructions" ;) So check out the 3DNow! manual while you're waiting for the Athlon docs.
--
"Athlon" is ancient Greek for "competition". Which is what AMD will finally be giving Intel...
AMD's FAQ says:
Does this mean that standard cases won't provide enough cooling? Or does "enclosure" mean something else?
I just want one simple question answered: Which is faster, a K7 or a PIII at 550 MHz (so they are the same)? And please try to be unbiased, although I know it is incredibly hard for you guys. I also don't give a crap about cost, it's all about speed. So what is it?
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YIPEEE!!!
Ok. I'm better now. I've heard that there will be some delay on the dual K7 boards....so, I guess I'll just have to wait to get me a Dual-Athlon...or, should that be a Bi-Athlon?
Can they hook it directly into my brain like Intel did with Homer Simpson? I'd like that!
Holy cow! That is a very good observation. I am impressed! Gives the logo a little extra meaning now...
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Actually, benchmarks that I have seen make the AMD K6-III series outperform the Pentium III in all regards including "true 32" as in WinNT. The only place where clones have trouble against Intel is the FPU. Its not that AMD is bad there but Intel chips have pipelined FPUs that dramatically assist foating point.
Actually, I would commend anyone that weighed the cost-benefit ratio of purchasing Intel vs. AMD. A PIII is just A PII with SIMD instructions which would not help NT at all. As I said before, AMD would actually be better. Also, there are issues you need to realize. If you want high-performance, you buy a 64-bit Unix. Saying NT handles 8 users simultaneously is quite laughable.
-Clump
Hey, I'm all for AMD processors (die intel, die..:) - but what's with the name?? Athlon.. a friend mentioned to me this sounds like 'celeron', not quite the image of my chip that i'd want people to have..
;)
other than that, the prices look damn good. might have to get rid of this K6-2 and get one of these
Penguin computing sells an 8-way Xenon system..... Berck
I agree.
And who knows what AMD has in plans for the future. They'll probably always have somthing to match up, in a way.
but its Web site, not Wed site :)
(just look at the link to AMD)
Its Not Them