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Subject: Re: What's the latest Athlon for Chess?

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 09:27:24 12/21/02

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On December 21, 2002 at 10:18:30, Bob Durrett wrote:

>On December 21, 2002 at 01:17:52, Matt Taylor wrote:
>
>>On December 20, 2002 at 15:59:23, Bob Durrett wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>I guess everybody is agreed that Athlon is the "choice of chess champions," so
>>>to speak.  I guess I'll have to buy one next month, or maybe February.
>>>
>>>Is the AthlonXP 2.52 GHz the latest?  I suppose not.  What is, or will be by
>>>February 2003?  Who sells it?  Compaq?  Dell?  IBM?  Hormel?
>>>
>>>Better yet, if someone would care to provide all the procurement specs, I'll buy
>>>one for everybody.   [Just kidding.]
>>>
>>>Bob D.
>>
>>In March, the latest will be the AMD Clawhammer/Opteron (I hope!) which will be
>>sold under the name "Athlon64." This is the K8, the next generation.
>>
>>Another point which seems agreed on by most people here is that chess programs
>>are hurt by latency (because of hashing). The K8 sports a lower memory latency.
>>For this reason, AMD estimates it will be 25% faster than current Athlons in
>>32-bit code clock-for-clock. Since the K8 should be releasing at a clockrate
>>on-par with the current Athlons... :-)
>>
>>-Matt
>
>Now THAT was a good answer!  Gets right to the point!  Super.
>
>I will wait for the Athlon64 and then become a "happy camper" when it arrives.
>
>Presumably, there is only one kind of RAM available for the Athlon64?  If not,
>which best for chess?  Any other suggestions?
>
>Thanks a bunch.
>
>Bob D.

All the discussion I've heard seems to indicate that DDR SDRAM is best for
Chess. Conveniently, that's all the K8 will likely accept.

One interesting point here is that, in previous generations of chips, the type
of ram a board could accept was based almost exclusively on your chipset. In the
transition period between SDRAM and DDR SDRAM, several co.'s released chipsets
that could accept both. The K8 moves the northbridge on-die. That means the ram
it will accept is based exclusively on the chip itself.

AMD is committed to DDR SDRAM, so we probably won't see any RDRAM K8 chips. The
initial launch will support pc2700 DDR. Sometime next summer, DDR-II will start
appearing, and AMD has plans for a K8 that accepts DDR-II at that time. (DDR-II
is faster and completely backward compatible AFAIK.)

-Matt



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