Some Confusion
Some of you seem to think that I said that AMD should introduce a Palomino at 1.5Ghz now, and gave me competitive reasons for AMD to hold off on that.
That would be fine, except I didn’t say that. I said AMD should introduce Palomino, not introduce Palomino at a high speed. If they want to stretch out speed bumps, I can see that.
There are two reasons why Palominos are going to be better than TBirds:
They’ll be able to run at higher speeds
They’ll use less power and run at lower temperatures than TBirds.
Either reason is good enough to bring it on line.
These TBirds flirting with 1.5Ghz are hot! A Tbird in an OEM computer running at 1.33Ghz isn’t going to be much cooler. OEMs don’t like paying money for serious cooling. If you give them a choice between a hot chip or a cooler chip, they’ll want the cooler chip every single time. That way they can spend less on heatsink/fans.
A lot of customers, too, are uneasy about the power TBirds consume and heat they generate as opposed to Intel chips. “Hungrier and hotter” is not a great marketing sales point.
No OEM or customer is ever going to go to AMD and say, “Don’t you dare give me a CPU that runs cooler! I demand that I spend more on cooling. I demand that I spend more on bigger power supplies.”
There is no good reason in the world why AMD shouldn’t toss out a less voracious, cooler CPU onto the marketplace if they have one ready. Unless, of course, it’s not.
(I would be amiss if I didn’t point out a lower-rated speed Palomino would be a big bonus for overclockers, but that’s just a fringe benefit. All AMD chip buyers would benefit from a cooler chip now.)
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