|
THE INQUIRER BRIEFLY headed into London's roadmap treasurehouse of images, The Porcupine, last week, and saw an official AMD document which confirms what we reported some weeks ago, the 333MHz FSB is go.
The document says that the 333MHz front side bus, which of course actually runs at 166MHz clock rate, has "significant market opportunities" and AMD is "committed to enabling" motherboards, with a variety of chipset partners, to make that happen.
Further, claims AMD, the XP is showing considerable stability at the bus speed. It also gives figures which it claims shows just how it can benefit using Sysmark 2002 Office (cough), Winstone 2002 content creation, and Dronex (1024x768x32 generic).
This compares the 333FSB to the 266MHz FSB. In the first case it claims 3.5 per cent performance in office productivity, 5 per cent better performance in content creation, and 7.5 per cent better performance for gaming, using the KT 333 chipset from Via.
Chipsets from Via like the KT333 now, Nvidia Nforce 2 chipsets, SIS and additional Via chipsets including the KT400 and the KM400 will all support the 333MHz FSB.
And it gives details of the 2700+, which uses a Thoroughbred core using the 333MHz FSB and a 256K cache.
While the Barton cores, at 2800+ and 3000+, will also use the 333MHz FSB and have 512K of level two cache.
The 333MHz feasibility study finished on August the 19th, while there will be Thoroughbred 333MHz samples for qualification during this month. Its validation testing for motherboards also begins this month, while volume Thoroughbred 333MHz availability is slated for October.
In Q4, AMD reckons as many as 900,000 333MHz mobos will ship, rising to between one and two million mobos in Q1 of next year.
Both BIOS and other materials on current mobos will change, and so AMD is trying to get its partners to validate boards right now.
AMD will launch XP supporting 333MHz FSBs by October the 7th, at the latest.
As far as marketing goes, AMD will call its FSB "Advanced 333MHz FSB".
And the firm will allow exhibits of its 333MHz FSB systems under non disclosure agreements (NDAs), although they must use an overclocked bus and must say that's what they're doing.
|
Threaded Mode