AMD Recently announced two new chips to the retail world. The first,
and most important, being the AMD Athlon Processor with the Thunderbird
core. It’s the same as the old K75 core Athlon Processors, but it’s moved
the L2 Cache onto the processor die, meaning it is full speed. It also
reduced the size of the L2 Cache from 512KB to 256KB, just like Intel did with
it’s Coppermine Pentium iii processor. AMD also made the L2 Cache into a
“non-inclusive” or “exclusive” cache. What this does,
it eliminate the mirror image of the L1 Cache in the L2 cache, thus freeing up
about 128KB of L2 cache in the Athlon. The second chip they announced was
the AMD Duron processor. The name of the processor oddly resembles Intel’s
Celeron Processor. That wasn’t a mistake. Both Processors are aimed
at the Value PC segment. The difference between the new Athlon and
the Duron are the L2 cache sizes. The Duron has only 64KB of L2
cache. This is where the exclusive cache comes into major play. It
would not be possible for the Duron to be inclusive because the L1 cache is
bigger than the L2, and therefore would create some pretty odd errors. I
have yet to see benchmarks of the new Duron Processor, but I’d like to go out on
a limb and say that it will be about the same as a regular Athlon in 3D games,
and horribly stink in office apps, which is what most value PC owners use the
most. I hate to say this, being I’ve been a die-hard AMD fan ever since
the announcement of the AMD “Sharptooth” K6-III chip, but this is
going to be another bomb, just like the K5 was. I’d like to predict that
the Duron will probably end up getting 128KB of L2 cache somewhere down the
line, or AMD will replace the chip all together with a newer Value Processor.
Death of the Super 7
While speaking of Value Processors, I must mention the K6-2 and K6-III
lines. AMD has two FAB Facilities, which will be making processors.
FAB 25 in Texas will be using Aluminum Interconnects as all AMD Chips have in
the past, and will be producing ALL of the AMD Duron Processors, and some of the
AMD Athlon Processors. FAB 30, in Germany, will be using copper
interconnects and will be producing mostly AMD Athlon Processors, and no Duron
Processors. This is because Copper is slightly more expensive than
Aluminum, and being AMD is trying to keep the Duron’s costs down, being it’s in
the Value market, they will be making only Aluminum Durons for the time
being. This leads to the point of this section. Because the Duron
has taken over both the market segment, and the manufacturing facilities of the
K6 line of chips, the K6 line has come to an end. AMD will not longer be
producing any Super Socket 7 chips, and will focus on chips made around the
classic K7 core. I’m personally sad to see the K6-III go, being I’m a
proud owner of a system with that chip. I love it’s super Integer performance,
and it’s 256KB of onboard L2, along with support for L3 cache. The chip, I
feel, performs just as good as a Pentium II at the same clock speed, and I’m sad
to know that the only thing that held it back was the fact it was named K6,
which turned 99% of 3D Gamers, and Performance PC users off, because of the K6′s
lack of a good Floating Point Unit. If you own a Super 7 platform, and are
looking to upgrade to the new Duron Processor, I suggest you skip buying the new
motherboard, and just simply pickup at K6-III 400Mhz chip for around $100 on
eBay, and plug that in. All your motherboard really needs is support for
the K6. Support for the K6-2 400 would bring out the finer performance
points of the chip, but is not needed.
See y’all next week!
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