Introduction
Lately, the PC-market hasn't really been too exciting. OK, there is NVIDIA's recently announced
AMD has indeed managed to apply a major change to the microprocessor scene. It's about a year ago that AMD was the first CPU maker to introduce a
Intel is trying hard to get back to the top, where it used to be for decades. The Pentium 4 is certainly no bad product whatsoever, but so far the majority of PC-users remains skeptical. Lately Intel dropped the prices of Pentium 4 to improve its attractiveness. However, most people, including myself, consider those price drops as not substantial enough to bet on Intel's 'net-bursting' flagship processor. While Intel paints Pentium 4 in the brightest colors, the reality shines in a different light. Pentium 4 is only performing really well with specifically optimized software. Today's software does not have those tweaks and the question remains, why anyone should buy a car today, when its tires will only be available in months or even years from now.
So while Intel is trying to attract us with substantially priced future tunes plus a handful of the
Today's release of Athlon 1300, running with a 1.3 GHz core and 100/200 MHz bus clock, as well as Athlon 1333, coming with 1.333 GHz core and 133/266 MHz bus clock, is only the logical consequence of refined engineering without any 'net burst' or 'rapid execution' galore. Depending on your stance towards AMD and Intel, you could call Athlon just 'simply straight forward', 'unglamorous' or 'less advanced', compared to Pentium 4. One fact remains, Athlon doesn't try to be something that it's not. It's a 'working-class' processor, rough, honest, reliable and hard working, but also always hungry.