Tom's right... it is going to be costly... but what did you expect from a chip that effectively merges x86 and Alpha architechtures? (granted it is only a first try) The entire reason for the 200 mHz front-side bus speed is the integrated Alpha technology. The cost comes not just from the chip, but the new motherboards and memory chip required to make it effective, not to mention plan to integrate anywhere from 512K to 8MB of back-side L2 cache. You will pay for features, and the K7 is merely AMD's stab at trying to grab a secure hold at the top of the performance heap.
And while the price might seem outragous for those of us with little money to spend on such costly items, keep in mind that, as far as I have heard, AMD will continue to provide the K6-x generation of chips on the socket 7 boards (I believe that the K6-3 is in fact waiting for release, with all testing done).
So, in my eye, I look at the the K6-x/K7 relationship like the PIII/PIII-Xeon relationship, except, of course, the chips are better... =)
Elder
PS - I also have used nothing but AMD chips since my last Intel 386
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Tom's right... it is going to be costly... but what did you expect from a chip that effectively merges x86 and Alpha architechtures? (granted it is only a first try) The entire reason for the 200 mHz front-side bus speed is the integrated Alpha technology. The cost comes not just from the chip, but the new motherboards and memory chip required to make it effective, not to mention plan to integrate anywhere from 512K to 8MB of back-side L2 cache. You will pay for features, and the K7 is merely AMD's stab at trying to grab a secure hold at the top of the performance heap.
And while the price might seem outragous for those of us with little money to spend on such costly items, keep in mind that, as far as I have heard, AMD will continue to provide the K6-x generation of chips on the socket 7 boards (I believe that the K6-3 is in fact waiting for release, with all testing done).
So, in my eye, I look at the the K6-x/K7 relationship like the PIII/PIII-Xeon relationship, except, of course, the chips are better... =)
Elder
PS - I also have used nothing but AMD chips since my last Intel 386