Desktop CPUs are still King

Competition abounds

If there's one thing we can all see for the last few months of 1999, it's that Intel isn't the only game in town anymore. In fact, the CPU field is really starting to feel crowded from several different angles. Most recently, Motorola is back in the fringe with their 7400 Microprocessor with Altivec technology? Huh? For the uninitiated, this is actually the Macintosh "G4" chip with "Velocity Engine." If you've been listening to Apple's press material, the G4 chip is almost 3 times faster than an equivalent Pentium III.

If you remember the G3 debut from just this January, you've probably seen Apple's dubious "Bytemark" processor benchmark, touting a G3 as twice the speed of an equivalent P2. Those of us grounded in reality eventually saw the biased nature of the test, and nowadays equivalently spec'ed PCs will still outperform the Blue and White G3s.

Fortunately for Apple, the G4 is backed with a killer SIMD set (Motorola's Altivec, or "Velocity Engine" as Apple has dubbed it), and an eventual memory/bus overhaul. While their benchmark metrics are still arguably skewed, there's no doubt that the G4 is a damned fast processor, and its only limitation will be how fast it can scale.

AMD's ace

AMD's sophomore efforts with the K6 series of CPUs has given way to a titan push with the insanely fast Athlon processors (formerly dubbed the K7). FiringSquad tests have shown that the Athlon is generally faster than ANY P3 to date, and even edges out dual-Celeron and Pentium IIIs on certain multithreaded tasks. As an "x86" processor, the Athlon can be tested head to head with Pentium III systems, and there is little dispute over their posted scores.

AMD also has an amazing roadmap, debuting the Athlon at 500-600MHz, ramping up to 700MHz in November, and hitting 1GHz by the beginning of the new millennium. All AMD has to do now is overcome a few substantial obstacles. First, they have to prove to the world that they are in fact able to ship a product in a timely fashion, and that the Athlon will indeed ramp up as fast as they claim it will. Finally, they need increased support from 3rd party chipset and motherboard manufacturers, who are being leaned on heavily by Intel to pass up support for the Athlon.

Intel's pricing schemes

For 2000, Intel is accelerating their pace a bit. Q4'99 to Q1'00 pricing will be adjusted to allow for a quick ramp to 0.18 micron. In fact, as 0.18 ships, its pricing will be positioned to allow for rapid conversion - they don't want any legacy 0.25 micron parts out after the new year. In Q1'00, aggressive pricing on 0.18 parts will continue to complete the desktop conversion process to 0.18 by the end of H1'00.