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Re: Inquiry about hardware



Atul Chitnis wrote:

> You get what you pay for.
> 
> One thing missing in this comparison is any acknowledgement of the *reason*
> why the K6 and VIA motherboard are so cheap. And that is because despite
> everything you might hear, the Socket-7 architecture is dead. You can paint
> yourslef into a corner by purchasing stuff like that, but in the end,
> remember that you expect to be using this machine beyond 3-6 months that
> your revised configuration will remain valid.

There is an element of politics involved too. Intel introduced
Slot 1 to continue it's controlled obsolesence. Another
reason is that there were Socket 7 clone chips from AMD and Cyrix.
Intel's designs to kill socket 7 prematurely haven't fully
worked so far. Slot 1 was patented , so you have to pay
Intel Tax. Super 7 motherboards have gone to 100 Mhz bus speed,
and there are reasons to think that the architecture is not
maxed out yet. Some H/w sites such as anandtech or Tom Pabst's 
site may have more info.

> 
> The first time you run into a program that requires P3 instructions, or run
> into a bug with the VIA MVP3 chipset, your machine reaches the end of its
> life.

Really , there is ABSOLUTELY no guarantee that an Intel chip or
chipset will not have bugs. Bugs can happen anywhere. From personal
experience with VIA motherboards, I have found them to be good. They
also do not have the Intel imposed 512K cache limit of the
TX chipset. The limitation is that the number of bits in the tag memory.
My VIA based FIC PA2007 motherboard has 1 MB cache and at that time,
it was the world's fastest motherboard.


> The sane PC purchaser does not buy a machine that caters to an immediate
> need. The correct way is to buy something that is a bit of an overkill for
> now, which will be just right 6 months from now, and will be still usable a
> year from now.

Sure! But mostly, what you (or at least , I :-) ) can afford
is already obsolete due to controlled obsolence. Realistically,
it is unlikely that there can be s/w which will work only
on a P3 , because of the huge installed base of other chips.
Sure, they may run faster on some chips by autodetecting and 
using specific instructions, but for a long time to come, 
my AMD K6 will work fine. At least , with Linux , I know it will!

The right tool for the right job. At present , as a home user , 
a K6-2 350 will serve me fine for the next year , at min. I 
don't expect to set world speed records, of course, but I 
think it will work fine. 

Disclaimer: I have no AMD stock :-) , and I also have a 
Intel P II m/c which is faster than my K6 and a Cyrix m/c which
is slower!

> 
> Atul
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