.75 GHz Athlon Released

News.com is reporting that AMD has released a new 750 MHz Athlon. The chip is quite pricey ($800 in lots of 1000), but should be available before the year is over. Jerry Sanders says AMD is having a strong quarter. Cnnfn.com also has an article about the release of the chip, and also mentions that a 533 MHz K6-2 was released.

Comments

Technological Advancements

[citizenx]

I'm all for technology advancing, really. Everything's getting smaller faster "better", and that's just beautiful. But this really screws up bragging. It just sounds weird to say "Yeah, I just bought a P5 1.25" "Pfft, I've got a 1.3, loser"

Performance hitch with 750Mhz Athlon

[questionlp]

There is a very nice review of the new 750Mhz Athlon over at http://anandtech.com

The review states that the new Athlon's external L2 cache does not run at 1/2 CPU speed but rather at 1/2.5 of CPU speed. So L2 cache dependant programs don't perform quite as well on the 750Mhz Athlon as anticipated. According to the review, the processor's FPU marks are (of course) faster than it's 700Mhz brother, but does the extra cost justify the minimal performance increase?

Many people would say no (including me), but remember that the consumers don't care about the internals of the processor, but rather care about the Mhz rating... That's why both Intel and AMD have pushed out 700+ Mhz processors already, even though their previous roadmaps show that they weren't going to push out those processors until Q1 or Q2 of 2000.

Anywho... just to inform you guys about the difference in the L2 cache...

The revenge of the underdog

[LarsWestergren]

I have been startled by the recent development in the computer business, how quickly a company can fall from grace and another rise to take its place. A few years ago (before I knew about Linux and Slashdot I should add) I thought the Wintel alliance had such a deathgrip on the market it would take at least 10 years before something would come along that could replace them.

But this year there have been at least three companies that went practically overnight from being the standard that all others were measured against to being rather pathetically looking has-beens. Microsoft is in deep shit. Most people consider 3Dfx thoroughly beaten by nVidia in the current generation of cards, and from what I have seen in their next generation cards nVidia will continue to widen the gap. They are finally beginning to handle enough polygons to give realistic outdoor scenes with "real" trees. What is 3Dfx boasting about? Putting four identical old technology chips on a new board, which wastes memory and requires a separate power line in to the card. A buffer that can give you blurred motion lines? Whopee, that must be fun all of five minutes. And now AMD finally getting everything right, including the timing of the launch.

But even if the upstarts are current media darlings they are still fighting an uphill battle. They have less money to throw around on advertising and continued research, and they must make a lot of profit and contine to win consumer loyalty or they risk falling back into obscurity.

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Intel must be worried...

[Gerv]

...what with all the problems they've had this year - the fiasco over Camino, then the Processor Serial Number thing (the E.U. is considering banning serialed P3's altogether, of course) and serious shortages of its high end processors.

AMD, on the other hand, has the fastest Mhz processor (good for PR, even if the speed increase is only a few percent) and is selling its lower end processors as fast as it can crank them out.

Could it be that we finally have competition in the processor industry? (faint)

There's a good review of Intel's year at The Register.

Gerv