On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 23:55:47 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

"Tony Hill" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:54:23 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

The important difference is that Athlon64 3000+ costs AMD more to
build than Intel's Prescott 3.0GHz chips, yet sells for less. New
process generation is equally one part technology, one part financial
these days (case-in-point, Intel is very aggressively moving the
low-end Celeron to the newest manufacturing product rather than just
focusing on high-end chips first).

This I realize and I'm not trying to take that away... I'm just saying that
if I didn't know any better and I were to read the article I might tend to
automatically assume that a .13 chip is worse than a .09 chip etc.... When
the truth is the manufacturing process is not really going to have a huge
impact in performance (unless of course it means they can get more MHz out
of it).

Well, until very recently a new manufacturing processes DID mean that
they could get more MHz out of it, usually quite a bit more MHz. On
the old 180nm process the P4 struggled to reach 2.0GHz, while on the
130nm process Intel has managed to push the chip up to 3.4GHz.
Previously the gains were even larger, with the 250nm PIII topping out
at 600MHz and the 180nm eventually managing 1.13GHz.

However the new 90nm fab process has maybe thrown this automatic
assumption of much higher clock speeds into question, at least for the
time being. Intel's still having trouble getting the "Prescott" P4 up
to 3.6GHz and have pushed back the release date of their 3.8 and
4.0GHz P4 chips multiple times. This might just be a specific
situation, as the Prescott is a VERY different chip from the
Northwood, beyond simply the process shrink, however IBM doesn't seem
to be too much better with their PowerPC chips. The PPC 970 (130nm)
made it to 2.0GHz and might have had some headroom left, while
currently IBM is struggling to get decent production on the 2.5GHz PPC
970FX (90nm).


So... err.. what was the point I was trying to get at here again?!
Ohh yeah, I think I'm basically agreeing with you :

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca