<a href="http://www.hardocp.com/">http://www.hardocp.com/</a>

<i>Guys Talk, You Hear Things:
Many of us “old-timer” enthusiast well remember the day that Intel started locking chips. It was a sad day indeed, but it was always something we understood Intel was doing to combat illegal remarking of their CPUs. Keep in mind, we did not like it, but we understood. Many things have changed between now and then and AMD has dug deeply into the enthusiast market with low prices and CPUs that were unlocked allowing us to push front side bus speeds way beyond spec. Trust me, Intel has taken notice of this and may just be getting poised to do something to win back the hearts and minds of the enthusiasts. No doubt their Pentium 4 CPUs have already won many of us back with their wide overclockability, but what if they upped the ante a bit? Word on the street is that Intel may just be getting ready to jump back into the enthusiast mindset themselves by not only selling CPUs that are unlocked but marketing the feature as well. Don't be surprised if you see boxed Pentium 4 Northwood Desktop CPUs show up “Xcelerated” or something to that effect.

Intel has also been hard at work testing their HyperThreaded version of the Pentium 4 CPU as well. If you remember back in June when we spoke with Bill Siu, Intel Vice President and General Manager of their Desktop Platforms Group, he mentioned HyperThreading to us being a big possibility but Intel was certainly focused on rolling it out only if they could meet their in-house “no harm” philosophy, meaning that they do not want HyperThreading breaking any programs being used by pretty much anyone. Word is that Intel has validated almost 1000 applications with HyperThreading and that means it might be very close to becoming a reality soon.

Lastly on the Intel Rumor Mill is gigahertz. We have thought for a long time that the current Northwood core had the ability to scale over the 4GHz range and it seems that Intel is getting close to that number. Pentium 4 CPUs seem to be operating in the 3.6GHz range as we speak. Now an unlocked 3.6Ghz Pentium 4 sounds like it would be fun to get hold of.

As always, there are no “facts” here, just what we heard when we got the local Intel rep thoroughly liquored. I have never seen anyone drink so much Wild Turkey…</i>


<a href="http://www.amdmb.com/index.php#News-4792">http://www.amdmb.com/index.php#News-4792</a>

<i>Well guys, this is some big news I'd like to share with everyone. After some phone calls to and from various sources inside the AMD underbelly.
I have news of the next Athlon XP processors to be released as the 2400+ and and 2600+ to combat the on going competition from Intel. While simple speed increases are not big news for a processor, there is more to this than meets the eye. Even before the introduction of the Athlon XP 2200+ processor, AMD knew they were having a small problem with the .13 micron cores and thus a second revision of the Thoroughbred core was put underway. This new revision, while not officially announced (and it may not be) is under going some testing with great results. The 2400+ processor is set to run at 2.0 GHz and the 2600+ processor is looking to be at 2.13 Ghz. As Intel has plans of releasing a 3.0 Ghz processor towards the end of this year, this kind of speed boost from AMD is desperately needed – perhaps even more.

As if things couldn't get better, along with this news comes an update on the fabled 333 MHz FSB Athlons. I was told that the AMD labs are really looking into this and testing it out with the newer “rev 2” cores of the Thoroughbred. While AMD could take the current 266 MHz FSB up to the 2.13 GHz range, moving beyond that would be very tricky and I have it on good authority that AMD has a lot more life in the Thoroughbred than many are expecting. What does that mean? I think we are going to see the 333 MHz FSB processors and fairly soon. The inside tip also explained that a decision by the AMD authorities on whether or not to use the 333 MHz FSB will be finalized within the next three weeks.

While nothing was mentioned of the Barton core, we have two options as to its whereabouts. Either this “rev 2” is the Barton and the info about the extra cache was left out, or Barton will follow this “rev 2” Thoroughbred.

In either case, this is the kind of news that we need to know that AMD is working hard on keeping the Pentium 4 within its grasp of control. If more comes to me, you can be sure it will be posted here, on Amdmb.com or the AMD Forums!</i