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Carmack on the K7
rebrane writes "John Carmack has apparently gotten his hands on a K7 and has a few favorable things to say. Notable quotable: "The bottom line is that I feel comfortable standing behind the statement that the K7 is faster than the PIII." "
Dude, yesterday 1960.
-W
Hey, cracking's illegal.
How about proxies?
How about those proxies which do not set X_FORWARDED header?
This is the form of censoring some gov's try to use.
I'm sorry but I don't really think WinChip and Cyrix aimed to be the fastest, though I wouldn't know...
And if I remember, though I'll probably screw up on this, 1 & 1 == 1
err like what?
My gigabit s7 board works 100% with Banshee AGP + AMDk2-450
By that argument, it wasn't particularly innovative to put an engine in a wagon. If you're going to be obnoxious, at least don't be stupid about it.
Or is he basing his opinion on a souped-up preproduction chip? Yeah, everyone'd like to have a K7-600 with a full meg of core-speed L2 cache.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The article has done a real switch. For years we have been fed the so-called merits of Intel x86 chips. We were always told that the alternatives (Cyrix, Nexgen, AMD, Winchip, etc) were unworthy despite the competitors often having better integer performance at a given clock speed. Now this author is saying that the Intel chip should be judged on its integer performance and that we should ignore the red hot FPU of the K7. Oh Brother!
but both of those processors suck. we're talking about processors that are not complete pieces of junk that cost half a centavo for a reason.
I dunno.. but it sure does beat a dual carrot system.. *bwahahahaha*
Now they're looking to be cheaper AND Faster. faster maybe...but AMD has a huge debt hole that they want to fill with the K7 pricing. For AMD to stay i business they have to milk the high end market margins (a'la intel). So you may not get cheap K7's straight off.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Retail pre-orders for K7-600 are going for $950+ American right now, $720 for the K7-550, SANS motherboard. P3 550 is runs about $690 right now.
Not sure if it'd be worth the $3-600 price difference for better performance. I could get a P3 550 or 600 and plug it into my motherboard without a hitch.
Again, I'll wait to see benchmarks and get some platform stability/compatibility reports.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
While some of the benchmarks so far have been a little disppointing, one thing that stands out is how much better the fp performance is then previous AMD or cyrix chips. In fact in one of the benchmarks the integer performance is less than the K6-3 at the same MHZ, this suggests to me that there is a lot of scope of optimization. The mobo`s and chipset are still pre-production AFIK.
I am confident that when all of the K7 capailities are implemented and the mobos, chipsets are production models the PIII will fall like a rock off of a cliffy mountain. };-p
I dislike NT but Mac OS sucks the big one. It is ok on the desktop where you know the quirks of your applications. But it is too prone to crash compared to NT. I wish my shop would dump all our NT machines for Unix. And I wouldn't mind having Mac OS on my desktop. But Mac OS does not work as a server. Been there. Done that.
Take a look at this chart:
:). It's
CPU___K7-600 K7-550 PIII-(500*1.1)_PIII-500
TNT2__73.9____68.5__59.2___________53.8
V3000__70.5____65.2__50.6___________46.0
P500
________K550___K600
TNT2___127%___137%
V300____160%___173%
P550
_________K550____K600
TNT2____115%____124%
V300_____128%____139%
I have supposed that the increase in speed is liner (but it is less than linear, K7 increase 7% in perf whit 9% in clock ).
We can see that in "real game" K7 15%-20% faster than PIII with TNT and 28%-35% which V3000
impressive how faster is K7 with a GOOD 3DNow! optimized driver (we know that Voodoo is)!
Western New York, (or atleast in my county) lost power, i knew when I came back from the fireworks and the clocks were blinking and the uptime on my computer was killed.
=)
- "My name is Legion, for we are many" -Mark 5:9
The one thing a power gamer wants is to keep the FPS up. And I guess at the moment he will be upgrading his 3d card to Voodoo 3 or TNT2 in stead of upgrading his Celeron 300 @ 450 to Intel Xeon or AMD K7
I agree, who let these kids play with the computers? And also, i'm glad my g/f isnt into computers, I prefer having nice times with her and what not. Its bad enough I'm into computers and geeky stuff, it'd be unbearable if we both her :P
- "My name is Legion, for we are many" -Mark 5:9
hahahaha!! this is the funniest thread i have ever read on /. thank you! you rock!!
i've used the same mac for the last 2 years and expect to use it as my main machine for another 3.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
> Oh please. If Intel bests AMD in less than a
> year, hooray for Intel.
Yeah, it's a good thing to have all competition
wiped out. That'll make for cheaper systems and
more performance in the future. NOT!
Horray for Intel and to-bad for us....
Competition => innovation at a good price.
~Competition => stagnation at a high price.
> If AMD wants public acceptance, they have to
> earn it.
No sh$t sherlock and I hope they can do it before Intel gets back on its feet. My Intel stock might not far as well but we as consumers will get better products for a good price. I'm buying AMD too, to even out my portfolio.
> Cyrix needed "running room" too. Perhaps AMD
> *and* Intel should have shut down their R&D
> lab's while Cyrix caught up...
Lighten up Francis! Who the heck said anything
about anyone deserving some running room? I'm saying that it will be good for 'US'(not U.S.) if Intel keeps stumbling long enough (~1yr) for AMD to get its finances back enough to continue the competition.
Funny, Intel wouldn't even be in this position if Microsoft hadn't released a 16bit OS in late 1995. Then again Intel probably wouldn't be helping out Linux and BeOS if Microsoft producted a 32bit desktop OS back then.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Last I checked, the MII 400 beat the Celeron 400 (with cache) and was just bested by the K6-2/400 in relatively standard benchmarks (here: http://www.cyrix.com/html/products/mii/ws99_400.ht m). I can get the MII 400 for $48, a Celeron (with cache) 400 for $120, and a K6-2/400 for $75. Does the K6-2/400 give me 58% better performance? I would suspect not, even if the benchmarks are quite off. The Celeron? Same deal, but even more pronounced -- the Celeron would have to be giving 2.5x the performance. Look at ftp://www.national.com/cyrix/mii/143ap.pdf for more detail. Recall the prices again ... and think that the difference is price is enough for me to buy most of 32MB between the K6-2/400 and the MII and 64MB between the Celeron and the MII. Would that help performance? Of course. For a cheap chip, the MII isn't bad. And Cyrix has supported Linux from the beginning very generously, and I believe in putting my money where my mouth is. If you are building a cheap system, this makes a difference and the MII isn't too bad -- with the money that you save, you can get RAM. With the money that you save compared to a PII/400/512k ($800), you can go SCSI and get lots of RAM. Don't even try to tell me that this makes more of a difference.
_ Benchmarks.html. Looking at prices for the 200MHz CII and the Pentium, I find that the Pentium is $150 and the CII is $36. So is the Pentium 200 4.16x better than the CII? I don't think so. Is the WinChip CII 200 the chip for CAD/CAM? No, but then again no 32 bit chip is the chip for CAD/CAM these days AND no one ever suggested that the WinChip was heading there. On the other hand, you have to be a special kind of dumb not to yank out your Pentium 133 right now and put in a CII 200 for $36.
As for the WinChip, the CII is pipelined and works a lot better than the C6, and all of them run at the same voltage as an old Pentium. Here are the benchmarks for the CII: http://www.winchip.com/products/winchip2/WinChip2
Let's compare apples to apples, here. If you are bitter because you never RTFM before buying chips and you didn't get something for nothing, well, that's your problem. I have been doing layout for 15 years, and I know better. If you don't, then STFU. Son.
So why are you even posting here. If you don't care about new CPUs/other computer components, why bother. You just end up making yourself look like a fool.
BTW I have a life, I work all day on non computer related stuff. I also play basketball when I have time
Tigger's like to read
hrm... lets see who has more money to pay john carmack off... intel or AMD? christ.
:)
as long as AMD can keep there MHz up with intel, it should be an intresting year or so.
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
pardon my ignorance, but what's the difference between the two?
Will you marry me?
Didn't you read the /. artical about intel being cheaper then the k7? but still, it's nice that "power gamers" will be using the k7 if they can keep there MHz up.....
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Just admit it. It's penis envy.
Freud knew it. You know it. We all know it.
So go out and buy a K7. You need it!
Perhaps the average /. reader should be less than overjoyed with the combination of benchmarks and price estimates for the K7. After all, Linux runs everything including games so much faster that buying the latest MHZ isn't important. Therefore, we are loosing another low-cost option to the Win9x hardcore bloatwear users. My future systems will probably be Celeron based, for what other choice is there for a budget box?
Jared Warren
There's no way that Xeon is cheaper than K7 at the same clock speed.
as long as AMD can keep there MHz up with intel, it should be an intresting year or so. :)
;)
woo hoo! Anything to present more choice in America. I'm all for some non-intel chips to come along and kick some butt.. that's what makes the world a better place.
Insert mind here.
here at slashdot you can read about it......
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Leave me out of this...
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
I read the article...
And it said the Pentium III would be less than the K7, not the Xeon. And according to the benchmarks, the K7 outperforms the Xeon, which is what the above poster what referring to.
~unyun~
*YOU* wont let someone else date you?
All I can say is THANK *GOD* for small favors!
I must agree. Price/performance wise, the Intel Celeron (w/ 128k Cache, not 266/300) processor is the best on the market. It blows away ANY AMD K6-2 product, but costs less. In my original post, I may have sounded like I was putting down the Celeron. I believe that it is the best general use CPU available. BUT...
The K7 is a post-Pentium CPU (for lack of a better term.) It can't be compared to a Celeron. Even AMD is marketing the Athlon as a low-cost high performance serverish CPU. The press releases admit that a K6-2/K6-3 could be better for many people's needs. However, unless you use Photoshop and only SMP enhanced applications, the PIII (and surely the K7) will be the champ.
Socratic Method
What the press releases didn't tell you:
USB is 16-Bit ISA with a cord that can detect not WHAT you plug in, but WHEN you plug in.
And this is the wave of the future?
From the AMD K7 FAQ at http://www1.amd.com/products/cpg/result/1,1265,314 ,00.html:
Question:
Is the AMD Athlon(TM) processor compatible with my favorite software?
Answer:
Yes. The AMD Athlon(TM) processor was designed to be compatible with the Microsoft® Windows® operating systems, including Windows® 98 and Windows NT®, as well as other leading operating systems such as Unix, Linux, OS/2 Warp, and Novell NetWare. The AMD Athlon processor was designed to be compatible with the existing installed base of more than 60,000 software packages.
To your other questions:
ASUS doesn't have licesne to make EV6 boards YET, I'd like to see them do it. There is no Dual K7 board that we've seen yet.
Socratic Method
PCI. 7+ Years and still the champ.
None of 3dfx's cards are real AGP cards. The s7 boards are fine with any PCI 3d card you throw at them. 3dfx's cards are like PCI cards in an AGP slot. They don't use any AGP functionality so it's hard to get compatibility issues. Try using some 'actual' AGP cards and see how you go - there have been problems.
Patience? I (not the original poster) have been waiting for a year for this. Now the chip is in production and I can't find out so much as the name of motherboard this thing will run on. Much less the availability of a K7 SMP board. I want to support AMD, but it's getting hard to hold back the mHz Jones.
Steady on there, Nodie. It's just Y2k testing -- ignore it and it'll go 'way.
No, no, no.
The reason the Xeon costs so damn much is because it comes with (up to) 2MB of full-speed L2 cache. And while this helps the Xeon along on SPEC benchmarks a bit, where it really shines--and justifies the exorbitant price (somewhat)-- is in running large databases and such things. That's why the Xeon mainly shows up in...yep, database servers.
Now, the K7 will eventually come in configurations of up to 8 MB (!) of full-speed L2 cache...but for now their only selling them with 512k of half-speed L2 (same as a PIII). And since they didn't post exactly which kind of Xeon the K7 beat so handily, I'm guessing it was the version with a 512k L2 cache. Now, this is still impressive, since the cache is full-speed, and that should make a decent difference in SPEC scores...but let's remember that these Xeons sell for ~$930 (Pricewatch), not ~$3500 like their 2MB big brothers.
Of course, having said that, if you were thinking of spending $930 for a 512k Xeon, say, for a workstation or something, then hell yeah you'd be better off spending either $720 (Pricewatch again) for a K7 550, or $950 for a K7 600 (yep). And once K7's start getting onto the market in appreciable numbers (right now, they're being sucked up by OEMs as fast as they can be fabbed), the prices there will go way down--in general, the lowest price on Pricewatch is often very very close to the manufacturers price/1000. It's known as supply and demand, people.
This poll is obviously a sham..There is no way that MacOS could get better reliablity/feature/cost scores then NT. Have you ever used MacOS? Do you have any idea how crash prone it is? compared to NT even, and thats under normal use, not high traffic webserving.
There is still no benchmark on K7 3DNow! vs PIII SSE. That one of the thing we are not sure about.
I dislike NT but Mac OS sucks the big one. It is ok on the desktop where you know the quirks of your applications. But it is too prone to crash compared to NT. I wish my shop would dump all our NT machines for Unix. And I wouldn't mind having Mac OS on my desktop. But Mac OS does not work as a server. Been there. Done that.
It does work as a server, but you have to know the limitations and work within them. For example, we have a PowerMac G3 at work which runs 4D server (database), which stays up for months. We also have a PowerCenter Pro 210 that runs 4D server hosting our A4 accounting system, NetPresenz FTP server, WebStar 2.1, and MacOS file serving. This machine usually stays up for months, too. Would I want to run a high-volume web site with lots of cgi on a MacOS 8.x server? No way. However, to say that MacOS doesn't work as a server is somewhat disingenuous.
I notice you haven't seen that AMD's not dropping the K6 line at any rate. They'll keep producing the Super7's as long as there's a market for them. That ought to make the low-cost PCs keep rolling out.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Duh ... look it up. http://www.distributed.net
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Actually from what ive heard, with most applications a dual celeron setup is only about 5-10% faster than a single celeron at same clock. Offcourse there are exceptions, apparently with applications that are optimised for SMP such as RC5, there can be anything up to a 80% improvement
Yeah, linux supports TNT and TNT2 now...
These drivers will have to go a long way before becomming actually usable. I have riva128. Quake2 timedemo scores 24 fps on windows and 10 fos under linux. And 3Dfx although are supported, run slower than under windows...
Spot on dude! AMD has always been a fantastic example of great plans let down by poor execution.
If it were Intel or M$ executing this poorly - we would not be so forgiving! I even suspect the K7 would be tagged as - dare I say it - "VaporWare"!
Yep, you're right, VIA really screwed up it's implementation of the AGP bus in it's MVP3 chipsets, just ask anyone who has one, it's a fucking abortion.
While he didn't include the comparable numbers, his description sounds perfectly consistent with AMD's own claims. It looks like the supporting evidence is about to start pouring in.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
after years of a lack of innovation, it's nice to see someone pushing the 80x86 architecture further. (p.s. first post! woo hoo!)
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
It seems as though gamers are going to have a field day with this new chip. But, I have this bad feeling Intel will catch up quick. We'll have to see......
AMD has always been cheaper...
Now they're looking to be cheaper AND Faster.
(Intel would have to sell it's Xeon cheaper than the K7 to have amd be more expensive and the k7 would still be faster. I.E. worth the price)
Here's to AMD
(p.s. who REALLY cares about 1st posts?)
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
>> you just don't get it, do you?
Get what?
--W
Bears can kill, beers don't usually.
Intel will catch up quickly; why should this give you a bad feeling?
I can't wait to get one of those. But does anyone know whether the motherboards are going to be AT or ATX?
"I don't like this deep shit about crazy crap"
so, your still running your 386? part of the geek mentality is enjoying new toys and things of that sort...
>-babe
> -- Yes, even I have a computer and I'm a chick.
> -- Haha, you'll never date me.
> WunderBra.
what in the hell makes you think i would want to date you? just because you have a computer? seesh, aren't we in love with ourself?
So is ignoring stop signs for pedeserians is in The Netherlands, but nobody even looks at them.
Ya but is a K7 faster than an overclocked dual celery system?
Not by much, at least according to PriceWatch. the AMD K7s (as listed by PriceWatch) are only about $40-60 more than their PIII counterparts, and considering the K7 hasn't been out for too long I'd say that's good, and the price should drop after a while hopefully...
And also you must realise that not even Linux can turn an old P-133 into a P6-4000 (Yea I'm being a bit overboard with that statement, but you get the idea), which is important considering the ever increasing game requirements...
That a large (for some definition of large) part of the human race likes 'dick-sizing', usually these individuals also happen to be in the part of humanity that make the most noise and they also happen to be in the part of humanity with the 'largest-dicks' (for some definitions of largest, dick and humanity)
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we're *very* impressed with your credentials. Indulge me while I go through them again, just for the sheer pleasure of it:
1) you have a computer
2) you're a chick
3) you seek to impress us with 1 and 2, above
wow.
As amazed as we are with #1 and #2, that all pales in comparison with how flattered we are with #3.
And, if I may speculate, you must have other astounding attributes that you haven't yet shared with us. Please, we would love to hear them.
P.S. Shall we call you "babe", "WunderBra" or just "Anonymous Coward"? You tell us... we're so in awe of your technical sophistication, your aloof and condescending attitude, and, yes, your gender, that we wouldn't want to be presumptous.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
He only mentions the integer at the bottom in a warning that the performance gain in a K7 is minimal. He mentions that it would take a PIII 700 to match the integer performance of the K7 600, which is no longer a big difference in clock speed.
Also, there are people who do not need screaming fast FPU calculations, just look at Apple's marketing of the G3.
the Athlon is all well and good, but they will be
using a new chipset. There's no telling what its
quality will be like. If they're bucking broncos
like the Super7 boards are, the Athlon will be dead in the water.
Super7 boards, while much improved in the past few months, still suffer from compatibility problems with various hardware -- especially video cards.
Dont get hung up on the Alpha bus...once you get past the mezzanine, it's a garden variety PC with all the junk in those "super I/O" chips.
I'm pulling for the Athlon, and hope there arent too many incompatibilities, but it's almost a certainty that there will be some. Brace yourselves.
MacOS tends to crash a lot, but it usually crashes when the computer does something specific, and if it does not crash the first time it usually doesn't crash the next. It either crashes immediately, or keeps on running. On the other hand, NT has a real tendency to randomly crash here or there. MacOS's crash proneness is do to its lack of memory protection, not its design in general. MacOS crashes because applications running under it crash, taking down the whole system. It is usually not MacOS itself which crashes, and when MacOS itself does crash, it is because a buggy piece of software corrupted the operating system in memory or data the operating system needs.
DES Khaddafi KGB genetic jihad Uzi Rule Psix Qaddafi cryptographic Peking Mossad Legion of Doom Albanian Serbian Saddam
AMD Website
500-MHz AMD Athlon - $324
Pricewatch
500-MHz AMD Athlon - $499-$505
Hell of a difference. If this just pre-market hype causing the demand to climb up or did they raise the price ?
The P3 has streaming simd instructions that do floating point calculations. This may give it a truly big advantage over a Celeron in applications that utilize them properly. The instructions are particularly useful in applications that do a lot of repetitive and relatively simple floating point calculations, for instance software synthesizers and effects processors.
Dude, you should use your power (processing power, that is) for good instead of evil...seti@home!
Well AMD would certainly be fools if they didn't make sure that some good dual processor m/b's hit the market soon. That's one of the K7's strongest points in my opinion.
Nope... Linux isn't faster for 3D gaming... _yet_. Right now it uses indirect rendering and goes through the X server, etc. Tons of context switches, lotsa memory passing, etc. Not fun. (The plus side is that you can run a 3D app on another machine and display it on something running a GLX-enhanced driver, e.g. a G200 or TNT(2))
Performance issues aside, the GLX module system is quite nifty. And XFree86 4.0 will fix that... when it comes out.
(Last comment: Something to remember is that the X system is sorta like NT 3.x's GDI in that it is a seperate process and not in-kernel. It's better in that it's network transparent though.)
i am offended at this post... very hostile, very sad
Sun Tzu loses credibility
Well, actually, I kind of wish my girlfriend was more into computers than she is. If nothing else so she would get as excited as I am about my programming accomplishments.
She understands the basics of computers and uses them frequently but she sees them only as a tool to get stuff done, not as an end in and of themselves or an enjoyable pursuit. I can understand that point of view but I do kinda wish she would get a little more excited about it all. ;-)
Good thing we have a lot of other stuff to talk about and enjoy besides computers!
I dont know about you, but I can instantly tell if I am sitting at a celeron system or a full blown PII/PIII system. it isnt nearly as responsive. for SMP work, the size of the cache is a lot more important. I am talking about things like Photoshop, Apache, etc. as far as pure number crunching like what you would do with RC-5 or even SETI@Home, there is little diffrence. also as many peaple have stated, going SMP relies a lot on the application. Most high end CAD or Graphics programs will work faster, but dont expect to go any faster with word perfect or something. with these two pitfalls of a dual celeron vs a single K7, I would go with the K7 any day (It would be much more cool anyways). If you notice, noone is marketing dual celeron systems for high end workstations or servers, even though there are dual celeron main boards out there. Do you think that there is a reason for this ???
Carmack has enough money laying around and a great enough reputation as someone who is more interested in technical truth than anything else to go and do something silly like be bought off.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
heh i dont know what you been smoking but linux is dreadfully slow in quake2/quake3 on my system compared to windows, on my voodoo2 windows was about 40fps faster, on my voodoo3 windows is 100fps faster(limited at 640x480 due to drivers). I am on a celeron 464, gaming in windows is bliss, in linux its pretty much hell right now, I am hoping xfree 4.0 can change this, I AM ready for change, but its still not a feasible os for any new 3d games
That's the idea, you wouldn't.
DONT CALL THE POWERS YET, PLAY DOOM INSTEAD.
I have a 386 serving as this LAN's internet router. Anything more would be a waste. I have another 386, a laptop, which I bought for $40 and use for code development abroad. You don't need anything more powerful to run a goddamn text editor. The system sitting on the gorilla rack at home, otoh, is a K6 (always could use a little more CPU and memory bus speed for running gcc et al).
I've witnessed this desire for new toys in the geek crowd, but it's hardly a universal geek characteristic. Some of us get more kicks out of squeezing useful performance out of older hardware by running better (or just older!) software.
-
-- Guges --
-
oh, my mistake because men as a whole are intimadated by you because you have a computer? now, i get it.....makes a whole lot of sense now....aren't you make rash generalzations about men, just like you are assuming we are going to make about females with computers?
I'm thinking that if it isn't too hard to do, a limit on AC messages from a single IP in a certain time period would be nice.
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
No. I can walk with my hands, can you?
The idea is: you can't really understand me, and
even trying gives you a headache.
Bye.
Linux does not run games faster. Q3 and Q2 both run much slower, under 3dfx and especially under the primitive TNT drivers, than the windows counerpart. This is more an indication of driver quality than the OS itself... but its still true.
Bullshit, show me a hardware configuration under which Linux GL Quake2 will run faster than on windows98. And linux does not even have yet the drivers for the fastest video card on market out there (TNT? TNT2? S4? G400? Rage128? anyone?)
I've always liked AMD, and their technology has almost always been slightly to moderately superior to Intel's.... What sucks is that as a _business_ AMD has been largely disfunctional.
Manufacturing shortages, bad batches, etc. have plagued the company for years. What good will the K7 be if they can't meet demand? Joe-average isn't going to wait, nor is the uber-geek (who typically has the patience level of a thimble).
I'm concerned the K7 will be another tragedy of great technology executed by a poor business.
-Stu
K7 will definitly be my next CPU. But I think Ill be waiting until October so they can do a second stepping CPU and prices can drop.
Which boards are supported right now (is there an ASUS board?) and is there already a dual-K7-board?
Gery
The answer is yes, me.
Who sits around childishly posting flamebait and then following each response up with a "I know you are but what am I"?
Someone here needs to get a life, and it ain't me.
I have been running a 6100/66 and AppleShare IP 5 since AppleShare 5 came out approx 2yrs ago, the computer functions as my offices' central drop box. For approx 75 people who use it regularly to post any updates or useful files that everyone should have access to, it has not crashed a single time in fact it has only been shut down once to install a new hard drive (the old one got full) about a year ago, other than that it has been running non-stop and I run no maintenance, no Disk First Aid, no Norton, nothing (I laugh in the face of danger). And my 8550/150 webstar box is just as problem free, true Macs won't run Yahoo, but for workgroup servers (what NT is most often used for) they will run just fine.
Carmack's article appeared to focus on the speed the K7 provided to gamers. Given his background, that's no surprise :-)
But gamer speed really depends on the graphics cards, motherboards, and connectivity between them and the CPU more than it does on raw CPU speed.
So how fast is the K7 (vs.PIII) at integers and floating point? Are they roughly balanced, or is this one of the chips that's faster at integers at the expense of floating point? Can it do MMX or other parallel execution tricks?
Are there specmarks or other cpu/memory intensive benchmarks?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
many video cards (even agp-based ones) are affected by the core speed of the processor.
:)
cards like the new matrox g400's (and the g400 max) are especially prone to this, as they aren't triangulated. cards with a triangular setup will perform all of the calculations themselves, but those without rely on the cpu to some extent, therefore reducing framerates and the like.
too lazy to log in..
highmaintenance
'Vpenis' envy, perhaps? Sounds like you've got some personal issues... Interesting sig line.
SaDan
It surely is "innovative" to construct a working tricycle with a 600 ps engine. Especially if it finally is slightly faster than a tricycle powered by a 3 year old.
Great. Hallelujah on modern technology!
uhhu.. now you're trying to hit me, aren't you?
What did I say..
-W
Does anyone have information on the speed of the K7 for distributed.net RC5 key cracking? (Its not listed on www.distributed.net/speed)