mbigna
10-16-01, 01:57 PM
I've been watching a lot of articles about the new Athlon XP's and the new Athlon MP's. The new labelling is the same (1500+ thru 1800+). I've observed the photographs of the new chips--specifically the L1 bridges. On the MP's you can see that the bridges are connected with a trace that lies just below the surface of the 'organic' material. It appears that AMD had to go out of their way to cut existing traces to lock the chip multiplier. I see shades of Intel and its 'SX' series of 486 chips--you know--they were the same except that Intel simply disabled the FPU and charged less. Intel did the same thing with other CPUs by disabling on-die cache.
The specs on the new MP's look to be identical to the XP's of the same speed. I guess we'll have to (don't flame me too much for this one) 'pony up' an extra $70 (US) for the privilege of getting a factory UNlocked chip.
The specs on the new MP's look to be identical to the XP's of the same speed. I guess we'll have to (don't flame me too much for this one) 'pony up' an extra $70 (US) for the privilege of getting a factory UNlocked chip.