2. Speed to market.
By using the more plentiful 300MHz L2 SRAM chips on the Athlon 750 AMD also gained another advantage versus the alternative route. The shipment of the new CPUs could take place immediately rather than wait for the less produced 375MHz L2 SRAM chips to arrive in bulk, which would lower the launch volumes.
In fact Athlon 750 CPUs are actually in Compaq PCs right now, available for purchase some two weeks earlier than AMD originally told us just three weeks ago.
OK, so it's got slower L2 cache…What does this mean for the 750's performance level?
AMD's newest Athlon evaluation system came equipped with an alternative to the company's own "Fester" reference mainboard, which is a first. The Gigabyte GA-7IX is the board AMD has selected for these important press-bound PCs, and it utilizes the same North and South bridge that knowledgeable Athlon aficionados know all too well by now:
AMD-751 Northbridge
200MHz host bus
AGP 2X
PC-100 SDRAM support
PCI 2.2 compliant
ECC support
AMD-756 Southbridge
UDMA/66 on board support
4-port OHCI USB
APM 1.2 compliant
PCI-ISA bridge
Plug and Play support
We're always talking about VIA's KX133 chipset as being the next "big thing" for the Athlon in our Athlon CPU reviews, and seeing prototype mainboards at Comdex based on the enhanced chipset have only made us that much more interested in VIA's Athlon solution.
At the time KX133 boards arrive, the Athlon CPU will get to stretch its legs a bit through advanced implementations of AGP4X and PC-133 support, which can't come a moment too soon in our minds.
Expect KX133 mainboards to arrive in February 2000.