VIA the AMD killa

[AmdMELTDOWN]

looks like via is gearing up to produce low cost Cyrix 0.13 micron chips, they will undoubtedly take a significant chunk of AMD's market. Question is, will AMD puppies embrace this chip if it turns out to be a "price/performance/value" deal?

 

[Guest]

The benchmarks I've seen on the newest and greatest Cyrix suggest it will not be much of a competitor at all. Granted, those were pre-release benchmarks, but... well, I don't think they can even approach the same speed as AMD and Intel. Maybe a contestant for the Celeron market?

Charles

 

[Bubba]

Did you see Cyrix's last attempt?
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000630/index.html
It wasn't pretty. They have never made a good chip. Their old SS7 chips were always slower and ran hotter than anything that was on the market.
I don't think they will take a chunk from AMD's market.
If anything, they will take a bite out of Intel only because Intel has the most to lose.
I do think you are right about one thing, they will be cheap, they will have to be to get people to buy them.

 

[Crashman]

Or maybe a competitor for Transmeta in the internet appliance field. These things are supposed to run without fans!

 

[Grizely1]

Sorry but I think everything you said wrong.

 

[Guest]

If the chips is good I don't care who makes it.... the nig question is surely if it whoops teh ass of teh Celeron(which isn't hard) will you intel freaks go buy it???

M

one of the first UK T-Bird users....

 

[Grizely1]

Probably not. The Duron kicks the Celeron's ass, but they aren't buying <i>it</i>.

 

[AmdMELTDOWN]

Why would I switch from 440bx board to via so I can get a duron for $40 bucks?, I think the nightmares I'll have will cost me more down the line!

 

[Grizely1]

We're not telling everyone to sell what they have and buy the Duron. We're merely suggesting that if your going to upgrade or get a Celeron, think about a Duron instead.

Please grow up in the essence of your postings.

 

[Guest]

The nightmares don't come if you know anyhting about the kit you are dealing with I have 6 PC's at home and of them the split is 3 Intel - 3 AMD , the odd thing is once they are setup correctly none of them cause me any real problems, in fact the only one to give any porbs at all was a PII on the trusty BX chipset.....
so you keep spending your $40 so you don't have to learn anything about hardware........

M

one of the first UK T-Bird users....

 

[AmdMELTDOWN]

Dude, If a person has a Bx board there only path is an intel solution, buying a duron will require a mainboard change. Personaly I would just reflash the bios and get the fastest P3(most bx board won't take the newest P3's) that the board will accept.

Please try to make sense in your postings.

 

[Grizely1]

Did you understand ANYTHING I said? Please go back and read my post.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

I think the real question is how much do people trust a VIA chipset, not how much do people trust an AMD chip?

The Duron is definately better than the Celeron. But is that VIA motherboard stable enough to be worth the risk?

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. I've seen some VIA chipset motherboards work quite well. And I've seen some VIA motherboards that are so picky about what hardware they'll work with that people have gone out and just bought an i815/Celeron to replace their crappy VIA chipset motherboard/Duron.

And then their system using the same memory, video card, sound card, modem, network card, hard drives, and CD ROMs worked perfectly just because they got a trustworthy chipset motherboard. So I don't think it's AMD that people have a lack of trust in. I think it's those funky VIA chipset motherboards where you just never know how well it'll work.

I'd take a 440BX or i815 over anything VIA any day. I'd pay the extra money for a Celeron just to know that my system will be stable, even after upgrades. To me, it's worth the extra money just so that you KNOW it'll all be good instead of having to hope every time you change a piece of hardware in your system.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

As for if VIA can actually take any real market away from AMD or Intel, the question isn't even really speed or price. It's dependability. Will their new chips and supporting motherboard chipsets run all hardware (like they should be able to do) without causing any problems?

Or will you end up having to swap hardware between computers just to find a video card that doesn't cause blue screens every half hour? Or swap memory sticks until you find a combination that doesn't lock up the system at random intervals?

IF VIA can (for once) provide hardware that works like it's supposed to, THEN it just might be able to take some of the market. I'm sure the price will be right, and hopefully the speed will be at least comparable. Hopefully they learned from their mistakes on that count. So the real question to their success is just how rock stable are they?

Despite all else, at least Intel and AMD make stable products. And it is this stability which has kept Intel as a market leader despite AMD's faster chips because simply, people trust that an Intel system will work.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.