It's that time of year again, when the beautiful leaves begin to fall to the ground in the same peace with which they were brought into nature, when the lovely cigar smell from the nearby gamblers gives you that nauseous feeling inside, it is the time of year when your tired legs just want to find a quick end to the seemingly endless walking set upon them...yep, you guessed it, it's Comdex time.

While we all may be able to enjoy the fall weather and the gorgeous scenery this time of year provides us with, we aren't all able to fly all the way out to Las Vegas for the annual Fall Comdex Convention, luckily, if you've got access to the internet, you've also got access to AnandTech, which also means, you're in store for complete coverage of the hottest items from the show.  AnandTech will be covering Comdex for the first three days of the show, starting Monday and ending Wednesday evening.  For those of you that don't know, Comdex lasts from 10:30AM till around 6:30PM every day, and it attracts some of the biggest names in manufacturers and members of the media alike.  It's a wonderful place to interact with the faces behind the email addresses, something we don't often get to do in our computer driven workplaces, so without further ado, let's get to Fall Comdex '98 Day 1, through the eyes of your webmaster.

Motherboards

What would Comdex '98 Coverage on AnandTech be without some motherboard coverage, well, I spent most of today interacting with a number of motherboard and chipset manufacturers present in the immediate area around The Sands convention center.  Comdex itself is spread out among a number of convention centers, such as the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the Sands as mentioned before.  Among those companies were ABIT, ALi, AOpen, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI, Shuttle, and VIA. 

The most interesting and unique displays in the motherboard category were definitely the upcoming products making use of Intel's soon to be announced Socket-370 interface.

As you probably have already heard, Intel realized that in order for the Celeron to truly be a low cost solution, it would have to ditch the bulky and costly PCB in favor of a socket design.  However, this also meant one thing, that Intel was wrong in saying that the future lay in the arms of Slot-1 and that the future of Socket-7 was dead.  In order to avoid admitting such a failure, Intel decided to create their own socket design intended to replace Socket-7 as the ideal low cost platform, thus creating Socket-370.

Socket-370 based motherboards will feature the common Intel 440BX chipset, which supports the 100MHz FSB, as well as the unreleased Intel 440ZX chipset which is essentially a degraded version of the BX.  The ZX will be available in 66MHz and 100MHz FSB flavors with the latter being introduced sometime late next year.

100MHz is possible on a Socket-370

One thing the market failed to remember when the Celeron was originally launched was that this was intended to be a "low cost" platform, however with the price of a Celeron system just a few hundred dollars less than the price of a Pentium II system, it is obvious that the main goal for the processor platform became diluted.  Luckily, mainboard manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to produce a true successor to the Intel TX line of motherboards that were so incredibly popular, their solution?  Socket-370 motherboards based on the Intel 440LX chipset.  These puppies won't support the 100MHz FSB (75/83MHz settings are likely) however they'll also be able to give the current Socket-7 market a good bashing as they should sell for much less than their BX/ZX counterparts. 

With the LX based Socket-370 motherboards priced at rock bottom levels, and BX based boards coming in at a much higher premium, the ZX falls in between the two in terms of pricing.  Unless motherboard manufacturers outfit their ZX based Socket-370 boards with options for the 100MHz FSB setting now, the LX or BX based products will prevail over their unique ZX counterpart.  You can think of the ZX chipset as the EX chipset for the BX market, if you can follow that comparison that is ;)

ABIT

• BM6 - ABIT's first attempt at the Socket-370 market is in the form of a BX based motherboard ala BH6, with 5 PCI, 2 ISA, and a single AGP slot to complement the 3 SDRAM DIMM slots, the only difference this time around being that the BM6 ditches the Pentium II slot in favor of a cheaper 370 pin Socket-370 alternative.
  According to ABIT, the BM6 will feature a fully functional SoftMenu II Jumperless CPU setup with the ability to modify the core voltage of the Celeron, as well as support for FSB settings as high as 100 and 112MHz, no other settings have been confirmed/denied yet.

• IT6B - If you remember back to Fall Comdex '97, ABIT announced a high end motherboard with on-board IDE RAID, however after numerous delays that product never made it to the hands of the consumer.  This year ABIT is making another go at it, the IT6B is ABIT's first Dual Processor motherboard with on-board UltraWide SCSI 3.  You get all of the ABIT quality, plus on-board SCSI and a dual processor option.

  Unfortunately ABIT chose to primarily target the IT6B at high end server markets, and never took into consideration that a tweaker or an overclocker might want an ABIT motherboard with dual processor and SCSI support, because of this the IT6B isn't jumperless.  Instead of making use of ABIT's patented SoftMenu Jumperless CPU Setup, the IT6B is configured entirely by the use of dip switches.  It's a tradeoff, but because of that the IT6B loses some of the unique value you come to expect from an ABIT motherboard.

• SK5 - Although ABIT originally announced a Super7 motherboard at last year's Comdex, delays and even a manufacturing flaw (ABIT's engineers accidentally put too many expansion slots on the board) kept that dream from becoming a reality.  Finally, after about a year, ABIT realized that the booming Super7 market desired their attention.  The result?   The SiS 530 based ABIT SK5, a baby AT contribution to the Super7 market.   Unfortunately very little information is available currently as to the performance, pricing, or any other features of the SK5.  One thing you may find interesting about the ABIT SK5 is its integrated SiS video chipset.  Other than that, don't expect the SK5 to turn too many heads.

• Socket-370 to Slot-1 Adapter - Here's a cool little toy, this device plugs into the CPU slot you'll find on most Pentium II motherboards, and essentially converts the slot into a Socket-370.  The card itself is simply a pin converter, so you don't really have any chance for compatibility issues to become a problem as they were with the old Pentium Pro Socket-8 Riser Cards.
  The primary target for this product, which happens to be featured by many motherboard manufacturers including ABIT, will be for large system integrators, as well as users who have older LX motherboards laying around.  As long as the cost of a socket-370 Celeron and this adapter are below the cost of a Slot-1 Celeron, this product should become a quite useful and cost effective solution.

AOpen

• AX59Pro II - Also based on the SiS 530 Super7 chipset, the AX59Pro II is intended to be a more stable alternative to the AX59Pro which uses the VIA MVP3 chipset.

• AOpen Socket-370 w/ Integrated Audio & 3D - To truly address the low cost market, AOpen produced a micro-ATX motherboard based on the 440ZX chipset, for use with the Socket-370 Celeron processor.   Featuring 2 PCI slots and 1 ISA slot, the design allows for an integrated ATI 3D Rage Pro chipset to be used in conjunction with a Yamaha processor for on-board sound as well.
  Motherboards like this were incredibly popular among those seen at this year's Comdex, and you can expect them to start appearing during the first half of 1999.

• AX6B Plus - Due out shortly, the AX6B Plus is intended to satisfy the wants of the user that can't seem to get enough out of AOpen's current product line.  Building on the quality and success of the AX6B motherboard, the BX based AX6B Plus takes all of the features of the AX6B and adds an Adaptec 7880P for on-board UltraWide SCSI 3 support.

  Unfortunately the AX6B Plus doesn't make use of the 5/2/1 expansion slot configuration (PCI/ISA/AGP) as can be found on the AX6BC, instead it only features a total of 4 PCI slots.  If you take into account that you save a PCI slot by going with the on-board SCSI the board can't be too bad, however that extra PCI slot would be nice.  Also coming soon to AOpen's product line is a dual processor board pictured above, it looks like both ABIT and AOpen are competing for the next wave of consumer demands.

Gigabyte

The above picture was the first thing that caught my eye as I approached the Gigabyte booth.  Apparently the folks over at Gigabyte got an engineering sample of the Intel Pentium II Xeon 500, and overclocked it to a whopping 600MHz without using any added cooling methods on one of their dual processor motherboards.  I received some contact information from a few public relations officials at Gigabyte, and I've been assured that AnandTech should be able to receive some Gigabyte motherboards for review in the future.

Multi-processor motherboards were also big at this year's Fall Comdex, Gigabyte took that trend one step further as they used their booth to display their first 4-way multiprocessor Xeon motherboard, the GA-6GXQU as can be seen to the right.  It is a huge motherboard, however one of the most significant features of the motherboard aside from its incredible multiprocessing power, is its ability to utilize FSB settings up to 133MHz, meaning a user can actually overclock the Xeon using a higher FSB setting, can we say Quad 504MHz Xeon Systems? (yep, as long as you can say "second mortgage on your home to pay for it all")

Shuttle

Shuttle had a hefty selection of motherboards in their booth, among which were quite a few new faces I had never seen before.  As soon as I get back from Comdex I'll contact Shuttle about reviewing some of the boards you're about to see.  In order to make things easier, you can click below for full size JPEG's of some of the upcoming motherboards from Shuttle:

HOT-599 | HOT-649 | HOT-653 | HOT-657 | HOT-681 

VIA shows off the MVP4

One of the largest displays of motherboards in the entire Sands convention center was held by none other than the chipset giant themselves, VIA Technologies.  The manufacturer of the Socket-7 AGP Chipset, the MVP3, displayed their latest concoction, the MVP4.  The Mobile VIA Apollo IV Chipset is a highly integrated solution ready for the demands for the upcoming computing year.  What makes the MVP4 any different from the MVP3?

Performance-wise, the two are equal in terms of normal business applications and even high end applications.  The MVP4 is nothing more than a MVP3 at heart.  Where the two differ is in how big of a heart goes into the MVP4 versus the MVP3.  While the MVP3 is basically a controller chip for the motherboard, the MVP4 contains an integrated AGP graphics solution, integrated sound, as well as integrated hardware monitoring and hardware DVD decoding.

The integrated 2D/3D graphics solution isn't your high end Riva TNT or Voodoo2 accelerator, rather a proprietary design produced by Trident specifically for the purpose of operating in such an environment.  While the MVP4 isn't intended to be a high end 2D/3D graphics solution, it doesn't give you the lackluster graphics performance you may be expecting.  VIA assured AnandTech that the performance would be "decent" and that it would be a higher end solution than the bare minimum requirements for a 2D/3D accelerator.  Whether that has any merit or not is up to you all to decide, however going on VIA's word, the MVP4 should provide most users with the ability to construct a nice $700 system with AC97 compliance among other things.

The hardware DVD decoding is another benefit the MVP4 offers in addition to its highly integrated nature and inherently low cost.   As if that weren't enough, it is possible for Fast Ethernet to be integrated into the chipset as well, sort of leaning towards the all-in-one PC design that the computer industry has been slowly but surely moving towards in the past few years.  Although hard core gamers won't drop their more expensive PC's in favor of a MVP4 based system, a second system built around a MVP4 motherboard wouldn't be too bad of an idea. 

Contrary to popular belief, VIA seems to be quite on track with the MVP4, at Comdex AnandTech was able to see a reference board running an AMD K6-2 without any problems at all.  Companies such as FIC and AOpen already have MVP4 based products in the works, and in the future a number of manufacturers will join the two with their MVP4 solutions.

What we've all been waiting for...

The rumors are true, 3Dfx quietly introduced their plans for the true successor to the Voodoo2/Banshee era of graphics accelerators, today (Monday, November 16, 1998) at Comdex, 3Dfx had a hot new product on display, the 3Dfx Voodoo3 graphics accelerator.

From AnandTech's conversation with a few representatives from 3Dfx, the Voodoo3 is a combination of the best of the Voodoo2 SLI and the Banshee worlds, at a much higher clock speed that is.  Sources indicate that the Voodoo3 will be available in 2 distinct flavors, currently only identified as the 2000 and the 3000 models.

The Voodoo3 2000 will run at a 125MHz clock frequency, feature a 300MHz RAMDAC, and be the "low end" performer out of the two solutions.  The Voodoo3 3000 will operate at a 183MHz clock frequency and will feature a 350MHz RAMDAC.  Obviously there will be a price difference between the two cards, however 3Dfx did not release any estimated pricing levels at the time of publication.  Both cards will be available in an AGP 2X flavor (none of the AGP 1X Banshee crap), they will both be an integrated 2D/3D solution, and the Voodoo3 chipset will boast dual texture processing units like the Voodoo2. 

According to 3Dfx, the 8.1 million transistors found on the Voodoo3 will be able to process more than 100 billion operations per second, more than 7 million triangles per second, 366 million texels per second, and overall it should offer about 2 - 3x the performance of a Voodoo2 SLI.  From AnandTech's brief encounter with 3Dfx this morning, the closest thing to a relative benchmark would be the claim that a Pentium II system running the current revision of the Voodoo3 silicon was able to achieve 30.1 fps in Quake 2 at 1600 x 1200, in comparison to the absolutely unplayable < 15 fps of a similar configuration on a Riva TNT.  Until we can confirm that, 3Dfx's potential is still up to speculation, but one thing's for sure, this is a company that has done it before...and there's no doubt in this editor's mind that they can definitely do it again if they're pushed to that level. 

That's all for now

That's all for now guys, I've got a meeting with 3Dfx tomorrow to discuss in more detail the specifications of the Voodoo3, so in tomorrow's update I should be able to provide you with a little more information than I already have.  I hope you enjoyed the brief description of Comdex Day 1, I've got much more to publish but that'll have to wait until another day.  Tomorrow you can expect some information from AMD among other things, however until then, take care and have a wonderful night. 

Day 2 of this year's Fall Comdex proved to be a much more filling portion of the hardware information we all know and love, in spite of the fact that the area covered by AnandTech only spanned a few booths and a couple of suites.  Among those visited today were ATI, Diamond Multimedia, and FIC.  So without further ado, AnandTech presents you with Fall Comdex '98: Day 2.

Motherboards: FIC

This is the last motherboard manufacturer update from Comdex, I promise ;)  FIC requested that I pay their booth a visit after my extensive work over at the VIA booth in the Sands.  So, today, I hopped on a taxi over to the Las Vegas Convention Center and decided to soak up some of the cigarette smoke filled air of the Convention Center.  One thing's for sure, the Sands Convention Center is much more spaced out and free than the Vegas Convention Center. 

In any case, FIC had a fairly interesting setup in their booth, the primary topic in their booth was the idea of having a PC99 compliant mainboard.   Actually, a sample design of a PC99 mainboard was displayed by FIC, unfortunately the prominent "Please No Pictures" sign prevented me from posting anything visual about the product, but as Craig Campanaro from Sharky Extreme will tell you, it didn't keep me from snagging a quick snap shot of it with my digital camera...it's amazing what technology will allow you to do these days isn't it? ;)

KZ-6000-V - This uniquity caught my attention when I noticed the white tape over what was obviously a Socket-370 for use with Intel's upcoming socketed Celeron processor.  Why?  Well, the board wasn't using Intel's 440BX, LX, or even the upcoming ZX chipset, instead it featured VIA's own Apollo Pro.  While the Apollo Pro may be kept out of the Slot-1 market by the BX, it may surely succeed in the low-cost Celeron 370 market as long as mainboard manufacturers choose to allow for the operation of the 100MHz FSB setting, and hopefully the 112MHz and 124MHz settings will follow.

On-Board Video - Nope, we're not talking about the horrendously slow ATI 3D Rage Pro, FIC demoed a motherboard with an on-board Matrox G200 accelerator, now how's that for quality?

SiS Makes a Comeback - Even FIC, the motherboard manufacturer who seems to always live and breathe VIA has a motherboard based on a SiS chipset.  The SiS 620 controller chip will be found on one of FIC's upcoming Slot-1 motherboards, AnandTech will naturally put that board as well as all of the other FIC motherboards through the tests they deserve in the near future.

3Dfx Continued....

A quick meeting with 3Dfx put an end to many causes for speculation about the upcoming Voodoo3 mentioned in AnandTech's update from Day 1.  First of all, for reasons to do with not wanting to develop an AGP to AGP bridge, the Voodoo3 will not offer an SLI solution like that of the Voodoo2.  Secondly, a Voodoo3 card will probably contain only 16MB of frame buffer memory, so don't expect any massive 64MB configurations from 3Dfx at the launch of the Voodoo3. 

The Voodoo3 will feature both analog and digital outputs for monitors, meaning you should be able to make use of both your current analog monitors as well as true digital flat screen monitors through the use of a port such as the one seen to the right.  Also according to 3Dfx, 183MHz for the 3000 model is definitely achievable, with a $299 pricetag being the absolute maximum for such a configuration.  Don't expect the 2000 model to become too popular among gamers as it'll probably be directed towards OEMs more than end users.

Canopus

After nearly killing me for not awarding them the best TNT card for the Spectra 2500 (price is a factor, c'mon guys) the wonderful people over at Canopus were more than happy to let me snag a few pictures of a prototype of the upcoming Videoport 600 add-on to the Spectra 2500.  Unfortunately, Canopus didn't have a working model and other than their fairly impressive video rendering fx engine, the Canopus booth wasn't too incredibly exciting.  But do take a look at the Videoport 600, it adds many video editing capabilities to the already excellent Spectra 2500:

ATI

One of the most highly anticipated products at this year's Comdex had to have been the ATI Rage 128 chipset.  While ATI boasted performance rivaling that of nVidia's Riva TNT, most readers and consumers remained skeptical of ATI's claims based on the company's not so wonderful reputation.  After the brief demo AnandTech saw at this year's Comdex, the Rage 128 definitely seems like a strong competitor. 

The benchmark comparisons displayed seemed, surprisingly enough, balanced in favor of ATI (hmmn..), the chipset itself does seem to be an above average performer.  It was obvious that V-Sync was left enabled in the demos running at the front of the booth, however even then the test machines must have been cranking out close to 60 fps under Quake 2 at 800 x 600.  The overall quality of ATI's first real 3D chipset should be acknowledged, and provided that ATI can deliver on time, the Rage 128 will definitely become a welcome addition, especially in laptops where decent 3D acceleration is beyond scarce.  One thing is for sure though, the Rage 128 won't be the elusive Voodoo2 SLI killer, just wait for the Voodoo3 for that.  It seems as if the Rage 128 will be the ideal, all-purpose, TNT alternative with it's support for more than just 3D acceleration (the letters DVD come to mind). 

For AnandTech, the final day of Comdex came on Wednesday, the third official day of the convention.  While the number of meetings and the time spent in the Las Vegas Convention Center was limited, the information gained from the 7 hour expedition was definitely informative.  AnandTech paid visit to Matrox, Number Nine, SGI, AMD, Tyan and ASUS.  So let's conclude AnandTech's coverage of Comdex with Day 3, tying up all loose ends..

Just two more motherboards...

Due to popular request, I paid visit to two companies in particular at Comdex (even after I promised not to make any more motherboard related updates, don't worry, this one won't be too long), Tyan and ASUS. 

At ASUS I finally managed to get a contact for evaluation samples, so you can expect more ASUS reviews on AnandTech in the future.   Unfortunately ASUS didn't have too much to show off in terms of motherboards at this year's Comdex.  Their P2B gained a few family members, some of which were equipped with on-board Audio and Video, and others which were simply geared towards a more cost effective solution.  For those of you out there who made the wish that ASUS would once again walk down the path of the Jumperless CPU Setup ala ABIT, you're out of luck once again, after the little mishap with the original P2L97 motherboard ASUS seems to be soured on the idea of a jumperless solution as none of their upcoming boards will feature such an option.

Tyan had a little more on display than ASUS, Tyan already had a few successors to the Thunder 100 DLUAN on display, including a Dual Xeon version with dual channel Ultra2 SCSI.  Tyan also has a MVP4 based Super7 motherboard in the works, the board itself looks promising with its spacey ATX layout, however the success of the product will probably depend on VIA's new chipset.   Following the lead of virtually every other motherboard manufacturer at Comdex, Tyan also had a Socket-370 motherboard which used the BX chipset, AnandTech was told that an LX version may be in the works however there have been no plans to release a ZX based product as of now.

That's it for the motherboards, now let's get on to some of the more unique displays AnandTech soaked up on Wednesday.

Matrox

After a wonderful meeting with Matrox it seemed as if I was leaving a restaurant with a hungry feeling inside.  Not only were no new products announced or even alluded to, but the entire issue about the disappointing lack of an OpenGL ICD for the G200 line of products wasn't answered with anything more than a "we're still aiming for a November release" response.  If Matrox can keep their promise, we should be able to expect somewhere around 1.5x to 2x the performance of the OpenGL wrapper, an expectation which this editor unfortunately will have to wait to see to believe.  The meeting with Matrox indicated that Matrox was waiting to release an OpenGL ICD that was both stable and offered a significant performance improvement over the wrapper, let's hope that the delays don't mean that Matrox's goal was unattainable.

Number Nine & SGI

What do these two companies have in common?   In browsing the suites of the Las Vegas Convention Center waiting for a meeting with AMD, I noticed an interesting combination of names, the graphics accelerator giant and the graphics manipulation monster, Number Nine and SGI, were sharing a suite.  On display at SGI's suite, in addition to the multitude of O2 workstations rendering objects in 3D at unbelievable speeds (unbelievable to your average x86 user that is) SGI had a very unique little device on display: the Number Nine Revolution IV and Digital LCD Display combo.

The Number Nine Revolution IV card has been thoroughly torn apart by most editors and reviewers due to its obviously horrendous 3D gaming performance in comparison to most other next generation graphics accelerators.   However, if you remember back to the days of the Number Nine Imagine 128, when 2D performance and especially 2D image quality were top notch considerations for a new video card, Number Nine was on top of the game...and after what was displayed at Comdex, to a certain degree, they still may be.  The 32MB Revolution IV, while boasting 3D performance that makes an i740 look like a Voodoo2, has some of the most crisp, clear, and definitely enjoyable 2D image quality (and performance for that matter) on the market today.  While more extensive benchmarking is necessary to put it in its place in comparison to Matrox's G200 and the newer TNT cards, the Revolution IV does much more than boast above average 2D performance.  Its built-in digital out port (in addition to the standard analog VGA port) allows for a direct digital connection to flat panel LCD displays, more specifically, it is the only video card that supports SGI's newest 17.3" SuperWide Flat Panel LCD, in digital mode. 

This monitor put my Panasonic 21" to shame, easily adjusting to the highest supported resolution of 1600 x 1024 in true color, the monitor, in combination with the Revolution IV video card, allowed for some of the most intricate Photoshop images to be displayed and scaled without losing either performance or quality.   Unlike conventional LCD displays which interface through your video card's analog-out port, this flat panel is a true digital solution, allowing for extremely fast pixel response, an extremely high DPI rating (110, meaning for every inch of space on the monitor, 110 individual dots can be displayed), and of course, as a result of its unique size, this monitor has support for resolutions outside of the conventional 1024 x 768 limit without any loss of image quality.

So who cares if Number Nine can offer outstanding 2D quality and performance?  Well, seeing is believing, this product and/or the combo is not meant for hard core gamers, rather the corporate market.   Currently there are no real popular contenders of this kind in the market, forcing many professionals to use gaming cards to accomplish their tasks, often times without the high quality they desire.  Have you ever tried reading 8 or 10 pt white text on a solid black background running at 1600 x 1200 in true color on a TNT based card?  Try it sometime, and imagine being able to read the text as clearly as you can read the words from a book in front of you, you're imagining the quality of this graphics accelerator.  

This product truly blew me away, with so little attention given to monitors in spite of all of the publicity choosing the best graphics accelerator is allowed it isn't often that you hear about a product like this.   Shortly AnandTech will review the Number Nine Revolution IV and put it through a fair testing process in both 2D and 3D situations, with the usefulness of Graphics Winbench 98 coming to an end as all video cards produce seemingly equal scores, it is time for a change in 2D benchmarking, a change AnandTech will bring you.

Seizing the Opportunity...AMD

With Intel absent from this year's Comdex, it was AMD's chance to take the show by surprise.  While they didn't do so publicly, AnandTech's private meeting with a few officials from AMD proved to be most interesting at the least.  Going into Comdex without expecting to see a working K6-3 or K7 demo, I left Las Vegas with a much greater feeling of closure and completeness as both of my dreams for AMD came true with two demos that you'll enjoy hearing about.

The Sharptooth - AMD's K6-3

The first demo AnandTech was given by AMD was of the Sharptooth, a codename for the upcoming K6-3 processor.  Featuring the same core as the K6-2 400, with a modification to include a full 256KB of L2 cache running at clock speed, the K6-3 managed to keep up with an equivalently configured Pentium II 450 system while the K6-3 ran at a "meager" 400MHz.  According to AMD, as long as your motherboard supports the K6-2 400 (especially in terms of BIOS support), the K6-3 will be nothing more than a chip replacement.  FIC has already announced BIOS updates for their MVP3 based motherboards to support both the K6-2 400 and the upcoming K6-3.   With the K6-3, any cache outside of the 256KB integrated L2 becomes Level 3 (L3) cache and does add a 3 - 5% increase in overall performance, once again, without requiring a motherboard upgrade.  For once, a CPU manufacturer has provided the market with a true upgrade path for their older products, so all of you Super7 advocates owe AMD a huge thanks for not abandoning the market as abruptly as Intel did with their move to Slot-1.  

The K6-3 is supposed to be launched in Q1-99, hopefully that launch date will be met, however if history repeats itself, we may be in for a tiny delay before the K6-3 is ramped up to full volume production.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

The Real Beauty of AMD - the K7

As mentioned above, I never expected to be able to see a live demo of AMD's upcoming K7 processor, however to my surprise, AMD had a first revision engineering sample of the K7 up and running in their suite at this year's convention, the results were beyond amazing. 

For those of you that don't know, the K7 is an entirely new processor design from AMD, carrying over nothing more than the 3DNow! instruction set from the K6-2/3 predecessors, and abandoning the Socket-7 platform in favor of a slot-based design, called "Slot-A."  While the processor is pin-compatible with Intel's Slot-1, architecturally, there is a universe of difference between the K7 and Intel's Pentium II.  While the Pentium II uses the P6 bus architecture, AMD's K7 makes use of the Alpha EV6 bus protocol, which is theoretically more advanced than its Intel counterpart.  The use of this EV6 protocol is much more than an attempt at rebellion by AMD against the restrictive hand of Intel, but it is also a much larger step towards advancement in technology. 

Intended to compete directly with Intel's upcoming Katmai processor, the K7 will have to do much more than boast 3DNow! support to beat Intel at their own game.  Comparing KNI (Katmai New Instructions, aka MMX2) to 3DNow! will become much more of an issue once the release date of the Katmai approaches, however now, very little information is available on KNI so any noticeable differences between the two technologies are unknown.  One thing does exist in favor of AMD, 3DNow! has been and will be out for a much longer period of time than KNI at the release of both the Katmai and the K7, we'll have to wait and see if that has any effect on the outcome of the AMD/Intel wars of 1999.

The K7 will feature either 512KB or 1MB of L2 cache on the CPU cartridge itself, the stripped down processor looked much like the card inside of a Pentium II's casing, with one peculiar difference, the size of the K7 chip itself (not the card/cache) is about half of the size of the Pentium II's Deschutes core.
In terms of L1 cache, the K7 will have a full 128KB of L1 cache, accounting for a noticeable percentage of its performance lead over an equivalently clocked Pentium II.

The K7 will run on a 200MHz EV6 bus and will be the first desktop AMD processor to support multiprocessing, a dream which may soon become reality.  In terms of chipset development and support, AMD had their own design for a chipset solution at Comdex, codenamed "Gomez" which featured a North/Southbridge design similar to that of most VIA chipsets.  According to AMD, at the launch of the K7 (officially Q2-99), both VIA and ALi should have chipset products ready for shipment and integration into motherboards for the K7. 

The demo AnandTech was given featured a 500MHz K7, running at 200MHz x 2.5, with 64MB of PC100 SDRAM (the SDRAM was operated asynchronously to allow for the 200MHz FSB setting), on an AMD Gomez based Slot-A Motherboard, with a Diamond Fusion Z100 3Dfx Banshee video card (don't ask why they chose a Banshee, your guess is as good as mine).

While AMD wouldn't allow AnandTech to obtain any benchmarks from the system, the performance seemed obviously superior to that of a Pentium II 450 in terms of the speed at which it completed Winstone, and 3D Winbench.   The K7, if supported properly by motherboard manufacturers (an action that would be nothing but beneficial to manufacturers) can very well become the processor to get in 1999, even with the availability of the Katmai from Intel.

With that said, what could possibly be the downfall of the K7?  AMD plans to release the K7 in a 0.25 micron version, then later make the transition to a 0.18 micron die size.  If we think back to the initial die shrink from 0.35 micron down to 0.25 micron with the K6, numerous delays and yield problems tormented AMD and eventually led to an extremely late release of the highly anticipated K6/266.  If the K6/266 had come out when it was announced in November of 1997, AMD would have had an extremely strong competitor against Intel's high priced Pentium II 300, unfortunately the die shrink down to 0.25 micron caused AMD more problems than they had bargained for, and it wasn't until 3 months later that the K6/266 finally hit the retail channels.  AMD has a rocky road ahead of them if they plan to release the K7 in Q2 alongside Intel's Katmai, if they can, the consumer will have a huge advantage, as a true competitor to the Katmai should drive prices down incredibly at the launch of both processors leaving you all to choose either AMD or Intel for your next computer.  If AMD can't however, it'll take much more than a K7-2 to pull AMD out of another delayed product.