Slashdot Mirror
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." "
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.
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.
The size (the maximum size of an ATX board is smaller)
:-)
Where the holes are (to attach it to the box)
The power connector (Both the actual connector and the 'soft-power-off' stuff)
The connectors for keyboard, serial etc. are in a standardized position at the edge of the board (the same way ISA/PCI cards have been) and don't require cables inside the box.
And certainly some other small stuff I've forgotten to mention
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
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.
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?