The prices

For the time being quite expensive, the truth. The official prices for every 1.000 units for the mikes from 733 to 550 MHz are equivalent approximately (without counting either the benefits of the seller or the taxes) to between 125.000 and 60.000 pesetas; nevertheless, two mikes in format FC-PGA370 (to 550 and 500 MHz) and two Slot1 533 MHz have a more accessible price, between 50.000 and 40.000 pesetas.

In any case, insurance that they will go down inside very little, since AMD does not remain of crossed arms and it already offers his 700 MHz powerful Athlon to "only 110.000 pesetas and 550 MHz that to approximately 44.000. The war continues, the prices go down: what marvel is the free competition.

Conclusion

First of all, we must congratulate Intel for having made a mike (really more than 10 mikes) rapidly and really innovative of some aspects like his technology of manufacture or the cache memory integrated with breadth of 256 bits, in addition to for the beginning of the abandonment of the Slot1

Nevertheless, we must give him a double ears pull in everything what it concerns to the chipset and the memory destined to these mikes. The chipset i820 still has not presented before himself, i810E is not by no means a solution (I would not recommend it to anybody, and less for a Coppermine) and the obsession for the RDRAM instead of the PC133 owes to commercial or strategic motives more than to technical reasons.

If we have doubts between buying this mike or an AMD K7 Athlon, the decision probably is given by the price (the Athlon should be cheaper, although he needs powerful power supplies) and for the availability of the basic badges, since there is not doubt that both are mikes of very high yield; of course, in mathematical calculations the Athlon it keeps on being clearly top.

In any case, the AMD fans must not worry too much: the current Athlon is marvelous, but just in case his manufacture is already in tests phase with technology of 0,18 microns (with which they hope to obtain the 1.000 MHz magic number on January 10), in addition to which soon it will have more cache memory (integrated, perhaps?) and it will use more rapid memoirs as PC133, DDR-SDRAM... or enclosed RDRAM, who knows.

To end, three advices:

• do not buy a Coppermine with a motherboard i810E for any motive;
• if he does not want to wait to i820, Apollo Pro 133 buys a badge with chipset; or...
• ... or a Pentium III E and a badge BX (with support of the new voltage and a recent BIOS, eye).

(Speaking about basic badges: Asus has his first motherboard almost ready for Athlon...: and take a ROUTE chipset!).