Bij Gamespot hebben ze een drietal i820 based systemen getest, allemaal uitgerust met een 733MHz Pentium III processor. Het gebruikte RAM was wel verschillend, de ene had RDRAM, de andere kregen PC100 en PC133 modules mee. Om de resultaten te vergelijken hebben ze ook een Athlon 700 systeem met PC100 RAM in de mix gegooid. Uiteindelijk is de conclusie dat alleen het P3-733 systeem uitgerust met RDRAM het kan winnen van de Athlon 700. Voor een 128MB RDRAM module betaal je alleen wel $760 dollar, katjing!
What was really surprising was the performance of the Coppermine/Direct RDRAM combination. It's clear Intel needs RDRAM to remain competitive - even the VIA PC133-based SDRAM system lags behind Athlon. Although RDRAM-based systems will likely start appearing in November or December, it's probably going to be some time before upgraders can get their hands on them. Corsair, one of the more visible name-brand suppliers of SDRAM, has put its RDRAM product line on hold for the time being, because the company couldn't get a reliable supply of RDRAM at any speed. It will be very interesting when motherboards using the Via KX133 chipset ship. The KX133 core logic supports AGP 4x and PC133 SDRAM. That may give AMD the boost it needs.It is looking like Intel's risky move to RAMBUS may just pay off. From our initial testing, it looks like an RDRAM-equipped system will have better overall throughput than one without RDRAM - even when using the same chipset, CPU, and graphics card. The question is: Will there be enough RDRAM to go around? As we've seen, even a 700MHz Athlon will outpace a 733MHz Pentium III running on SDRAM.
It's not definite, however, that higher-clocked Athlons will do the job. I've spoken with system vendors who indicated that the Athlon 750s have slower L2 cache timings, which adversely affect performance. In some cases, the 750 barely ran ahead of the 700. That could very well change when the final 750s ship, but it is worrisome.
Right now, Intel is at 0.18 micron and can gradually ratchet up clock speed. The current Athlons are still at 0.25 micron, and the 700 runs pretty hot. AMD will be shipping 0.18-micron parts around the start of the year, so the race will soon be on. One thing is clear from all this testing: The chipset and memory types do matter.
All of this is good news for gamers. With Intel and AMD slugging it out in the performance arena, prices can only come down while performance improves. And that's good news whether you buy Intel or AMD.
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