Slashdot Mirror
Intel's .18 Micron Chips "Coppermine" Released
Anonymous Freak writes "Well, it's finally official - Intel has released their "Coppermine" processors. Their press release page has a bunch of information, including the release of the OR840 board, and its accompanying i840 chipset. " 15 new processors, with the 733 Mhz going for $776 right now. Check out Yahoo's coverage of what Intel is hoping to get out of this (Hint: The word starts with a p, ends with a t, and has rofi in the middle).
Mmmm ..... Pentium-muddy-brown ...... it must be fast ....
we would say a site has been Colonized.
Alan Cox posted a comment here. At least I hope that was really Alan. It did get a score of 5, so I would tend to believe it.
Anyway, Alan said that 2.4 may come out sometime in March. If it's ready!
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
I read an article somewhere that these cpu's were supposed to have a 'thermal noise sensor' for random number generation. Can anyone confirm/deny this and give more details on it.
Actually, no, I was correct. It was announced on June 23rd, 1999 and wasn't available anywhere until late July.
, 00.html
SUNNYVALE, CA--June 23, 1999-- AMD today announced that it has commenced shipments of its new seventh-generation microprocessor, the AMD Athlon[tm] processor, to computer manufacturers. Formerly code-named the AMD-K7 processor, the AMD Athlon processor is initially available in speed grades of 600, 550, and 500 MHz.
From AMD's own pressroom:
http://www1.amd.com/newsroom/display/1,1528,243
As far as motherboards - sure, you can go to pricewatch and a bunch of places list them, but once you actually start calling you'll find that it's actually harder to buy one. To be honest, the situation has changed in the last two to three weeks, but back in August it was virtually impossible to buy an Athlon motherboard.
As an addendum to the above - before you reply that I'm wrong and OEM shipments are not the same thing as a product announcement - look at the announcements:
June 23th, "AMD SHIPS THE WORLD'S FASTEST x86 MICROPROCESSOR"
August 9th, "AMD INTRODUCES THE 650MHz AMD ATHLON[tm] PROCESSOR"
and then finally,
October 4th, "AMD SHIPS WORLD'S FIRST 700MHz x86 PROCESSOR"
So, if these aren't announcements of products, then where are the product announcements?
Basically my point is that all manufacturers announce products before they are available in stores. Everyone pointing fingers at Motorola and Intel is missing the vaporware that everyone else, including AMD, is announcing.
Oh, get a brain. Spelling flames ("Spell-lames") are so pathetic.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
$ grep '^p.*rofi.*t$' /usr/share/dict/words
:)
proficient
profit
$
Please could you be more specific?
Add a spell-check button to the Post Comment page. I don't want this to be interpreted as a spelling flame, but a post full of mistakes is simply distracting. Perhaps if an automatic check were handy, people would use it.
David
Sorry I can't spell.. I was concentrating on good content, getting my point across.
Although I admit that it is pretty bad of me spelling THAT WORD wrong. I guess I could blame it on AMD though, they need to market their processors name better!
((Trust me, I do not feel good about makeing a stupid mistake like that.. But, I'm over it))
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
The rush for a bigger clock speed, will continue until the 1GHz is reached, but these speeds don't count anymore. a) Your Word processor ain't gonna be faster b) The high frequencies come in handy mostly with number crunching. c) The number of data bytes, that a controller can push down the PCI pipe ain't gonna increase with the MHz of the CPU. And in the latter, there are several other solutions, that are far more interesting and give greater productivity than the clock speed itself. Intel already lost the race... it's just the stupid customer who is getting dazzled with big numbers and fancy colors.
they use socket 370 right.. at 100mhz bus with the clock multiplier set to 5x, if you run the bus at 133 with the chip locked to 5x that would run at 667mhz!!!! you could use a motherboard like the bp6(http://www.bp6.com) which lets you adjust the speed of the bus to 153mhz you could easily overclock the new p3's which are the p3-500e and the p3-550e which use the socket 370.. just think the bp6 is a dual socket 370.. dual p3 running at 667mhz!!!!!!!!
Intel is once again muscling to the top of the processor market using its fabrication capabilities. It's too bad not every company can afford to have as many fabs running at the same time. The problem is that only the dominant processor company can afford that kind of manufacturing power, but nobody likes a monopoly (except for monopolists) so there will always be a good chance for the underdog to succeed except for the fact that they don't have enough manufacturing prowess. Kind of a vicous cycle, huh?
but when the aliens use their super-sekrit farfenugen sucking ray - you're screwed ....
Well, I don't know what a "perverbial" sleeve is, but I hope there's only one. While you go look for it, maybe AMD should look up their proverbial sleeve.
Yup. Agree completely. As further evidence, notice that they haven't lowered the prices on the low-end stuff, like they usually do with a full-blown product release. When those prices drop, we'll know that the high-end stuff is really there.
IAAL,BIANLY
AMD intros $666 700MHz Athlon, cuts prices (The Register)
yup.. not only that.. but the athlon can have a possible bus speed up to 400 Mhz .. while the intel III can only go up to 133 Mhz... awwwww... like I really feel sorry for intel !! hahahah
I'll still be zipping along in my 1972 air-cooled VW.
Zipping? When you said VW I thought Bug. Then you said zipping. I couldn't figure it out, until I realized you'd misspelled Porche.
:)
I think I'm making a start...
;-)
ROFI = Return On Funds Invested ?...
And ROFI is after a 'p' and before 't'.
So the puzzle must be that Intel are trying to make money (ROFI) after a pee and before tea.
In other words, they are trying to make money fast.
A complex contest, but solvable
It's not as funny when you realize the P6 core is almost five years old. AMD still has alot of catching up to do. Wait until Willamette to see if Athlon can keep up with Intel's next generation of x86.
Oh, how I wish I could ask "or is it just marketing crud" without getting rated flamebait :-)
I've surfed all over the Intel pages and can't find anything but advertising goo. Maybe that's my fault.
There, now it's not bait,
-AC#8192
In this case the ones that matter to me are 6 and 7. Intel's 6th gen versus AMD's 7th gen.
:))
No matter what Intel does to the P3 it is still, and always will be, a 6th gen core. I'll give them credit for squeezing this much performance out of an ageing design, but until they bring out their next IA32 chip (Williamette i believe) which i think will be a new core, AMD will have the better product from a design point of view. All AMD need to do is not drop the ball, and that's down more to the marketing department than the engineering section. THEY HAVE A SUPERIOR PROCESSOR !!!
Now all i want is SMP, DDRSDRAM, 266MHz EV6, full speed L2 cache etc... then we will see how close Intel can get
see the other slashdot comparison. Unlike the copper connects used by motorola and AMD, the coppermine does not use it. That is just a marketing ploy. Paul
That was the first thing I noticed when I saw the new speeds. "667? Ummmmmmm...." :p
I find it extremely annoying that they left their typical naming conventions just because of a superstition.
Oh well, you could always get dual 333's.
-Ashen-
I'm rooting for both so that way the next time I upgrade I will be able to choose which one I want and not get pocket-raped by a single company that dominates the processor market.
-Ashen-
Motorola never announced 500 MHz G4s. Apple did, and could not deliver as they promised, and laid the blame on Motorola.
Maybe we can start a distributed cracking effort? It is a tough encrpytion - it would probably take a PIII 600EB a few millenia in CPU time to brute-force it according to my back-of-the-envelope(tm) calculations...
I think the cracking effort should be called Hemos@Home in honor of the encription system's creator. Or maybe Local-H?
Tell me the name a of mass-produced microprocessor at 100nm. There are none because it's too incredibly expensive. The 100nm G4 is almost certainly a demo chip produced with IBM's help. My resources tell me that the mass produced G4 is actually 0.18um. Actually I have numbers between 0.22um and 0.15um but nowhere near 0.10um.
Where are you going to get the 400MHz RAM to run on that bus? PC133 RAM has only been available for a few months. Heck, it's tough to get 400MHz SRAM, and that is 10 times more expensive than DRAM.
So what? It's not like this is news. We've known this was coming for a long time, and now that both AMD and Intel have announced plans for 1+ GHz machines to come soon, who's going to rush out to buy one of these Coppermines unless they were about to rush out and buy a new machine anyways? Much better to wait for the big boys. Personally, I think the only benefit to this is the price wars, from which we all benefit.
I dont see the problem with RAMBUS #$@DESRWKLW#$@
NO CARRIER
(Hint: The word starts with a p, ends with a t, and has rofi in the middle).
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
Check out: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/99q4/991025/index. html Intel is catching up, but still is way behind in floating-point. That's gotta hurt! The Coppermine chips do beat the Athlons of the same clock speed in some tests, mostly games, but Athlon is still ahead of Intel for now.
I think it's funny that the AMD Athlon 700 processor beats out Intel's flagship 733Mhz beast in many tests. Check out Ace's Hardware's benchmarks.
Just curious - but how small can these things go before quantum interference takes its toll?
And whatever happened to gallium arsenide instead of silicon?
There is a good comparison on Ace Hardware between the Coppermine and the Athlon here.
You were joking, right? I thought so.
LouZiffer
I guess that makes me "bad."
No sig.
But "patent" doesn't have rofi in it...
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Seeing as how these chips were originally, and even recently slated for release around this time next year, it makes me wonder what else Intel may already have production-ready but isn't sharing with us so they can soak up more profits. Clearly, they have had this chip/chipset either ready for a while or close enough to ready to be able to launch it by now, but before the release of the Athlon, it wasn't coming out any time soon. Is this just Intel's ploy to soak more money out of people by charging high prices for chips that aren't state-of-the art by not releasing the state-of-the-art chips? Or were they planning on releasing something better, and just rushed this into production? (We see that often in the software world, but you can't 'patch' a CPU...)
/. ben /.'ed? The main page is loading at a slow crawl, and the title apparently is no longer Slashdoot, but simply ':' and none of the images on the main pages are loading correctly. Is this just me or a server problem?
And, offtopic...
Has
---------------
Yes! That guy!
Check out these comparisons between the Coppermine and Athlon:
Ace's Hardware
Tom's Hardware
I don't necessarily like Intel but I knew they were holding back some great technology.
.18 micron CPUs out soon. I'm also waiting for SMP athlons...
I hope AMD can get thier
Dave: Look everyone, 733 mhz, and ONLY 776 dollars!
Bob: Hey, now that's a deal if I ever saw one. Good work Intel! Keep those prices falling.
Dave: And not only that, but the pentium III kicks ass!! It's by far the most bang for your buck.
Bob: Totally
According to the Register, the i820 has fundamental problems.
"The failures are not just poor board design, some serious theoretical issues are involved -- resonance being the key one. Buses are running into quarter and half wavelength resonance effects which cause voltage margin and timing margin violations. No re-engineering of the drivers, board, or receivers will fix this problem with three RIMM systems."
Funny, I don't recall Intel doing this before, at least not recently. Perhaps back in the day with the 486's.
Truly, though, I don't know which company is worse (or more disappointing)--Intel or Motorola. Both companies have screwed-up big-time in the past couple of weeks. Motorola announced the 500MHz G4 when it was essentially vaporware (and still is essentially vaporware), and now Intel has rushed to "market" with (as far as we the consumers can tell) a nonexistent chip.
It seems there is a parallel when deciding between which CPU maker to choose and which OS maker to choose. Intel and Motorola are not only disappointing, but appear (at least to me) to be resorting to tactics all too-often used in the industry today. Microsoft, meanwhile, uses many of the same tactics (but at least they release products, even if they continue to suck after the usual 300 patches are applied). All three companies suck far more than do their competition. And yet the majority still continues to purchase their products, mainly (I think) due to fear that software or hardware won't work properly if not used with the CPU or OS that "everyone uses."
Not true!
Choose the underdog who makes the superior and less-expensive product. Choose AMD and Linux, or any other OS of your choosing (do I hear a small voice shouting "OS/2 Warp!" in the background?) Be different. Don't follow the crowd.
Let's show Intel, Motorola, and Microsoft that we think they, or at least their marketing and management teams, suck!
I estimate this problem to require 300 man-years of 1024 dual 700MHz Xeon boxes running in a massive parallel configuration. So in about 10 weeks, we should have an answer... hopefully before the NSA or the Chinese do. After all, this may be national security we're talking about here.
AMD NEEDS find a way to get word of their chip out to consumers!...This does not mean just lowering the prices, people (believe it or not) like to pay more it makes them feel as if they have the best their is!
:)
:) I agree that AMD needs to establish themselves as a household name like Intel, but they simply don't have the market budget that Intel has.
:)
Mostly, AMDs success has been gotten by keeping their prices low. AMD rules the low-end, sub $1000 and sub $500 PC markets right now. The Athlon is their way of breaking into the high-end market. (And it is far more expensive than AMDs other chips, but still WAY cheaper than Intel) Word of mouth is what has gotten them this far, and its working to some extent. I've recommended at least 5 people at work get AMDs because they are cheaper and kick Intel's ass on speed when we are comparing chips at similar clock speeds. Four of them got AMD K6/2 machines, one got a Celery chip but he's far tool clueless worry about.
But what do you suggest? People in neon suits? The AMD neon green bunny?
I LOVE my AMD K6.
Agreed. My K6/2 450 kicks major ass!
My journal has hot
Starts with a "p" ends with a "t" and has "iece-o-shi" in the middle?
Integrated L2 cache. Sockets instead of Slots.
Gosh, sounds like my 1996 Pentium Pro 180!
Dejavu all over again!
I'm laughing at the sites drooling over the 10-15% speed increase due to the innovative integrated cache. Gosh, that's the same speed advantage my older PPro had over the new kid on the block, the PII (clock speed for clock speed).
A few more registers, an improved manufacturing process, a higher clock speed, these are everyday things for Intel.
I fail to understand how all this is "News" worthy of TWO
Keep on Keeping ON,
Wake me when the computer industry does something interesting.
... are the McDonald's of the computer industry: all fat and no meat. I'd take Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, Motorola, or PA-RISC (to name a few) over the offerings of Intel any day.
I want to play with a Coppermine, and see how it does against a K7 for myself. Looking at how prices have been going the K7 will be a better bang/buck, and may very well be a better bang as well.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
You fail.
I'll take function over form any day.
LouZiffer
Theres a 667mhz Alpha as well, tsk tsk.
Actually, the FSB speed is relativly unimportant when you have large amounts of on-die cache. I think I once read a review of a multipler unlcoked Celeron (was in on HardOCP?) that showed that even with only 128k on-die cache,an increase of FSB speed brougth little increase in performance.
My brother has had a retail p3600b for a week now... They don't seem that hard to get ahold of to me...
Intel don't normally do this. They are getting desparate.
Quote from the article:
"The lack of high-end chips depressed profit margins, down slightly to 58.7 percent, and average selling prices."
how can intel possibly survive without a minimum 60 percent profit margin ?
oh, the humanity. they might have to stop bidding on irc servers on ebay.
how many companies enjoy a profit margin that large ?
int iConspiracyLevel = 1; (imagine X-files theme whistling while you read this) The gov't has been slowly disseminating alien technology to the top hi-tech firms for decades now. When did the UFO crash in Roswell, NM? And the start of the modern tech era, just happened to start shortly thereafter, i.e., invention of the transistor in 1947. Coincidence? The gov't is slowly releasing this tech in small bites to make it seem like a natural progression and because the more advanced tech will rely on some of the simpler tech to already be in palce. They've probably got warp-engine specs ready to release to Boeing as soon as the necessary technical supporting infrastructure is built up a little more first. int iConspiracyLevel++; On the other hand, this may all be part of the Aliens master plan to conquer earth. Tiny transistors on silicon are suceptible to an EMP (electromagnetic pulse). Old earth-indigenous tech like vacuum tubes was immune to EMPs. The aliens want us to abandon tubes and grow totally dependent on the tech they covertly "gave" us (wanted us to have). They then can EMP the entire planet from orbit and move in with little resistance as all computers will have failed (and hence defense/warining systems crippled). They are setting us all up people. But my '46 Ford with its wierd mechanical points and carburreated system and 10 guage shotgun will still be operating when those alien bastards come.
Just think, the .18 micron process was somthing that WAS a long way off.. Now that AMD is coming to life and kicking Intels butt, Intel is trying to get their act together. As far as I am concerned AMD will be beating Intel for a long time to come. Maybe not in mhz battles, but in the overall performance of their precessors. One of the most important things I see that AMD has going for them selves is their ability to use extrememly high FSB speeds. As soon as FSB's are running at 225+mhz we will see computers that run circles around today's best computers.
:) and the best. The only place I see AMD failing is in permoting their new Athelon. They need to advertize, get the word out! Being into computer and hardware I knew about the Athelon a few years ago, I read the press relase naming the Athelon the Athelon. BUT, A lot of people (mostly the non elite, non techie types) have no idea what the Athelon is, let alone understand the differences between the Athelon and say the Intel PIII.. AMD NEEDS to find a way to get word of their chip out to consumers! To date I have only seen one Athelon in newspaper adds, surrounded by 7 or 8 PIII's! This had better change, AMD needs to make their chips not only better, but more popular! This does not mean just lowering the prices, people (believe it or not) like to pay more money, it makes them feel as if they have the best their is! And with AMD lwering their prices for came clock speed ships ad Intel, AMD is saying to the ignorant consumer, "Our chips are less superior than Intel, thus we lower our prices in hopes that you will buy one of our chips" But in reality this is far from the case!
:)
I am gald that this new found "competition" in the chip industry has finally blossomed. AMD had a presence before, but that was all, now AND is pressing to be herd. It will be a long hard battle, one that not only needs to be won by having the biggest (err, in the chip market the smallest
But as I see it, AMD is makeing it's self a contendor, not just for today's market, but also for the future. Intel can only keep up these small changes in it's chips for so long, AMD has made that jump, they are leading the technology, not Intel. If AMD found a way to get word out to Consumers (Other than the techie elite) they would steal a lot of Intels business. So if you want a stock tip, BUY AMD! I am pretty sure I am going to. (If you make lots of money off of this stock tip be sure to send some of it my way, I am broke
Note: I am in favor of AMD kicking Intels butt. I like AMD and I think they are a good company, working on good things, for the good of the comsumer. I do not really see this in Intel. I seem to compare what Intel has in the CPU business to what Microsoft has in the OS business.. Neither of which I like or try to support... Thus this post may be a bit biased, but hey, I LOVE my AMD K6.
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
I wonder if these coppermine chips still have the software accessible serial number in them? Something to consider besides clock speed.
Notice how Intel didn't designate the 667mHz chips 666mHz? Obviously, there's a reason for that, but I find it funny that they would round down (166.6666666 mHz = 166mHz) on everything else, but round up on that one. Oh well. And I was so looking forward to a 666mHz PC.
I for one am rooting for AMD. Here is a company that took on an industry standard and set out to beat Big Brother at his own game. AMD's chip is benched marked faster; a true revolutionary as far as the clock speed specs. are concerned. Although I must admit when the i820 boards come into circulation, AMD better have a trick up their peverbial sleeve. There can be only one.
Today AMD cut the price of the 700 MHz Athlon, which still seems to be doing better than the 733 MHz Cu-mine on some of the hardware site tests, down to $666.
Zoiks!
Let's talk bang for buck, shall we?
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
I have to admit, this whole coppermine release thing smells of FUD against AMD, but....
Having a Socket 370 version would finally get them into Wintel based laptops, which are basically overpriced celerons at the moment. Another nice thing, using a socket 370 version, you could make some very small/slim but powerful Linux servers.
Just a thought.
I noticed several comments about how intel must have had this ready, but not released it until the Athlon came out. People seem to think that they were holding back. Well, I've got news for you: they weren't holding back. The coppermine isn't ready.
Sure, they say that it's been released. But what does "released" mean. There are only a handful of them out there, and don't expect that to improved soon because the yeilds are horrible. It seems that they have just enought to send to reviewers.
Has anyone actually tried buying one of these? Check pricewatch. Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zero. Normally, new CPUs can be found weeks BEFORE the official release through various grey market channels, but in this case coppermine is nowhere to be found even AFTER it was supposably released.
It gets worse. A big part of the improvement that's supposed to come from coppermine has nothing to do with the processor itself, but is related to intel's new i820 chipset and improved memory technology. All the benchmarks seem to use this chipset, but intel isn't even pretending that you can actually buy an i820 yet. It's not out and won't be for a while. So these benchmarks that are out there are not close to the performance you will get in reality.
So, some people say that the coppermine was released because of the Athlon. Well, you've got it half right. Intel is pretending that the coppermine is released because of the Athlon. They were being humiliated by the Athlon's superior technology, so they rushed a handful of basically incomplete (I say this not only because fo the missing i820 chipset, but also because the horrible yeilds intel is getting on these things) designs to the market so that their marketing people can claim to have the best. Yeah right. Personally, I'd get an Athlon. They actually exist.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
I have read speculation that Intel is pressuring motherboard makers not to build Athlon motherboards. If a company builds an Athlon board, then they might fall vitum to an "unfortunate shortage" of chipsets and the such. Even if Intel is playing fair, the last time I checked there weren't too many Athlon boards out there, especially compared to Intel- and K6-compatible boards.
On a related note, what happened to Gigabyte's Athlon motherboard? I read a review of it on Tom's Hardware, but there is no mention of it on the Gigabyte website.
Take care,
Steve
My guess is somewhere around 50nm quantum issues will start to serious crop up, so this is about 4-5 process generations from todays 180nm (0.18um). OTOH, life will start to get very difficult somewhere around 0.08nm because channel leakage (current though the transistor when the transistor is supposed to be turned off) will make it very hard to use many of the common circuit designs used in today's CPU's and will increase power to the point where cooling will be a serious issue.
GaAs, as other posters pointed out, is alive and well in some specialized applications. I have no idea where the semiconductor industry will be when we hit the wall around 50nm, but I don't think GaAs will be the answer - any more than Cu interconnect does much more than get us a little further along the performance curve.
Personally, my guess will be some form of stacked 3D semicondcutor process based on a 0.12um technology. Just being able to stack two transistors on top of each other (an n-FET and a p-FET) would cut chip area massively (due to the elimination of extra space between wells). But that's just my guess. Optical interconnect would be a big plus - an optical clock with really low skew would improve performance today by 10-20%.
Sure, for a plate of tasty profiteroles, I'd be cranking out the copper meself. Doesn't end with "t"? What kind of cretin finishes their dessert with coffee?
5 x 133 = 665, so following their normal scheme the chip would have been a 666.
:) *ducks*
I guess you couldn't sell the "chip of satan" to the religious rednecks though...
What, big deal, they've overclocked their chips again. .18 micron processes is not anything unheard of. It infact is quite large. I am running here a G3 based on a .15 micron process and G4's exist, based on a .10 micron process. Both copper. This is not new technology, not a big deal. Anyways I don't see them being availible for quite a while...
I guess they can claim they have the astes frequency, for whatever that is worth. They act as if the proocesser will do all these great things for you, like speech recognition (had that since '90) and 3d performance (if you have geforce256, the processor is doing $hit)... They seem to be forgetting that you need software to do that kind of stuff anyways. Maybe that's the probelm with an "open" architecture, they are not all working together to plan this.
Hi,
I've seen it for sale on micronpc.com, but I'd really prefer it if I could build it myself from one of those new Tyan boards, but ack, not available as retail yet.
So where can I buy a nice custom system (I don't consider the parts that micron lists as custom enough).
AMD NEEDS to find a way to get word of their chip out to consumers! To date I have only seen one Athelon in newspaper adds, surrounded by 7 or 8 PIII's! This had better change, AMD needs to make their chips not only better, but more popular!
Recently, I saw 3 full pages of AMD ads in PC Computing saying stuff like "Maximize Productivity" but I think the problem is that they are not making a name for themselves. People are mostly clueless and all they ever hear on TV is "intel inside" so when they go out to buy a computer, and they dunno what to get, they are gonna see an Athlon and a PIII sitting next to each other and go with the Intel computer simply because they have no idea what AMD is and will go with the Intel simply because of the brand name. Remember, technological superiority isn't gonna win every battle, you need to market your product (just ask micro$oft, hehe) What AMD needs is a TV campaign that will make the brand AMD and the processor ATHLON into something everyone recognizes.
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
As far as advertising goes, I guess AMD still needs to work on the tech sector...since you misspelled 'Athlon' about 10 times in your post... ;-)
A lot of people (mostly the non elite, non techie types) have no idea what the Athelon is, let alone understand the differences between the Athelon and say the Intel PIII..
Well, you must be one of those "non elite, non techie types," or at least one of those "not-yet-hooked-on-phonics-types" if you keep spelling the name of your favorite chip Athelon, rather than Athlon
But wait, let me guess. You are so elite, you don't have to spell correctly. Or, no, wait! you are SO elite that you are right and everyone else is wrong. That must be it.