AMD: Athlon XP 2100+ And The Hammer
The world’s largest computer show, CeBIT in Hannover, reveals the signs of a weakened economy. After years of steady growth in the number of visitors, this year registers 7962 exhibitors — a decrease of about 130 exhibitors compared to the previous year, and a first in the 16-year history of the event. Still, the show goes on — Tom’s Hardware brings you news from AMD, Intel, ATi and Hercules.
Starting things off at AMD: Frank Völkel, Bert Töpelt und Uwe Scheffel (left to right).
AMD officially launched the Athlon XP 2100+ yesterday. Read a detailed review of this processor here: Athlon XP 2100+: AMD Turns Up The Heat.
At the same time, AMD introduced its processor for notebooks, the Mobile Athlon 4 1600+. Essentially, this modified variant differs from the Athlon XP in that it makes use of an additional energy-saving technology to improve battery life.
At a meeting with Patrick Moorhead (left), Vice President, Customer Advocacy, and John Crank (right), Brand Associate, Desktop Product Marketing, Computation Products Group.
AMD Hammer
There’s not much more to report about the new generation of Hammer processors. Since the demo at the IDF a few weeks ago, no further technical details have been revealed. Pictured above are the SledgeHammer (left) for servers and the ClawHammer (right) for desktops.
AMD: Making The Switch To 0.13-µm
The first samples based on the Thoroughbred core and the 0.13-micron process should start shipping at the end of March. The 0.18-micron process is slated to be discontinued in Q4. The smaller structure makes it possible to decrease the surface of the die to 80 mm2, which means about 38% less space. Also, 0.13 micron allows the core voltage to be lowered. This decreases power consumption and, at the same time, allows for higher clock speeds.
The Thoroughbred will be used for the Athlon XP, Athlon MP and Mobile Athlon 4.
Intel: P4-Demo With 4,1 GHz, Mobile Pentium 4
At Intel’s press conference on Tuesday, the processor giant strove to make waves by breaking new records in Megahertz. A Pentium 4 running at 4100 MHz was shown on a video screen. However, the presentation was kept as brief as possible — apparently, the system stability could not be maintained for a longer period of time.
Mobile Pentium 4
The Pentium 4-M architecture differs from its desktop version only through its energy-saving technology. The Pentium 4-M features Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) and automatically adjusts itself according to the level of performance required. For instance, if a user is not running any applications on the notebook, then it switches over to a battery-optimized mode. Enhanced SpeedStep continually monitors whether an application needs higher performance, in which case it would switch to performance-optimized mode with higher power consumption, and then back. The advantage of this technology lies in its automation — the 250 microseconds that it takes to switch over to another mode is imperceptible to the user while working on the notebook.
Underneath the Pentium 4-M.
ATI Goes Integrated: Chipsets And Motherboards
ATI announced that it will join the mainboard chipset segment, thus following the trend of fully integrated chipsets on the OEM and consumer market, which is currently led by VIA, SiS and NVIDIA.
Both AMD Athlon/Duron (desktop & mobile) and Intel Pentium 4 CPUs (desktop & mobile) will be supported. ATI will be offering a total of five Northbridge and two Southbridge versions:
Northbridge
- Radeon IGP 330 — Intel Pentium 4 (400 MHz CPU FSB)
- Radeon IGP 340 — Intel Pentium 4 (400/533 MHz CPU FSB)
- Radeon IGP 340M — Intel Pentium 4 Mobile (400 MHz CPU FSB)
- Radeon IGP 320 — AMD Athlon / Duron
- Radeon IGP 320M — AMD Mobile Athlon 4 / Mobile Duron
The IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) Northbridge has an integrated Radeon graphics chip from the first generation (Radeon VE), which can access the PC2100 (DDR 266 MHz) or PC1600 (DDR 200 MHz) mainboard memory via 64-bit memory interface. Alternatively, an external graphics card can also be used via AGP 4x.
In addition, the mobile (M) version makes use of ATI’s energy-saving technology called POWERPLAY.
Southbridge
- IXP 200 — 6x USB 2.0, 6-Channel Sound, 3Com 10/100 Mbit, ATA-100 IDE, PCI
- IXP 250 — wie IXP 200 + advanced manageability features
Motherboard manufacturers can either use the new ATI IXP Southbridges (IO Communication Processor), which communicate with the Northbridge through a 266 MHz A-Link interface, or they can use Southbridges from 3rd party manufacturers, in which case communication would only take place through PCI.
IXP 200/250 provides 6 USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100 Mbit Ethernet connection from 3COM, 6-channel Dolby Surround Sound, plus PCI connectivity to v2.3. The 250 version offers additional network functions such as Remote Wake-On-LAN, Remote Boot Agent and a desktop management system.
These chipsets will be introduced to the market in May 2002, starting with IGP 320 and 320M for AMD. These will be followed by IGP 330/340 and 340M for Intel, as well as the Southbridges IXP 200 and 500, to be introduced in the summer. Among the launch partners on the motherboard end are Gigabyte and FIC.
Hercules: New Multimedia Products
Hercules showed off its new graphics card 3D Prophet 8500 LE for the first time. Apart from its blue PCB and the partially transparent cooler, this card is supposed to differ from ATi’s reference design with regard to a few aspects of image signal processing. The Radeon 8500 board has a 250 MHz chip clock and 250 MHz memory clock (4 ns DDR). The 3D Prophet 8500 LE should be available in stores within the next two weeks.
The Prophet View 920, a 17″ TFT monitor, is also new. As with its smaller 15″ brother PV 720, Hercules uses a Toshiba panel. The exact price has not yet been determined, but it should be somewhere between $700 and $800.
This tactical board targets gamers who play third person shooters, allowing them to extend the keyboard with comprehensive configuration and control features. An MS Gamevoice-compatible communication solution is also available.
Follow-up by reading CeBIT 2002 — Days 2 and 3.
