Question about the future of the Athlon XP

[mosco]

I am going to start ordering stuff for my new pc as soon as my auction ends and i get the money. I thought i read somewhere that the athlon XP was near the end of its life. I plan on getting an abit NF7-S and a 2500 Barton and i am wondering how long they are going to keep releasing athlons in case i want to upgrade in the Future. I know they are coming out with the 64bit chips soon but thought those were only meant for workstations. I also know that the KT600 chipset from Via is coming out in June/July so i figured that they wouldn't release that if they new that the athlon was almost done.

 

[pspada]

The 400FSB Barton chips (currently the 3200+ is the top of the line) will be the end of the Athlon XP line, although they may release one or two more. By the end of the year I expect we will be able to start using the Athlon 64.

 

[mosco]

so we probably wont see anything before december? When you say one or two more, do you mean like a 3400 and a 3600 or 2 more releases of a couple new speeds?

 

[pspada]

Yes, if they do come out with any more chips, perhaps a 3300+ and/or 3400+, but that's it, since they'd have to move to something lower than the current .13 microns to accomplish that, and it's just not worth it for the Athlon XP line. However, you can purchase the Opteron now, since the Athlon 64 is likely to be just a version of Opteron chip that's optimized for single processor desktop systems.

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: pspada
Yes, if they do come out with any more chips, perhaps a 3300+ and/or 3400+, but that's it, since they'd have to move to something lower than the current .13 microns to accomplish that, and it's just not worth it for the Athlon XP line. However, you can purchase the Opteron now, since the Athlon 64 is likely to be just a version of Opteron chip that's optimized for single processor desktop systems.

I don't think you can buy a mobo for Opteron yet...

 

[yhelothar]

nahh athlonxp are still plenty powerful for at least a good year..
oc'ed 2500+ barton will still be considered high end for another year...

 

[mrman3k]

Just a warning, you will not be able to fit an Athlon64 into an Opteron socket. They are two totally different sockets with different pin layouts. I would not get an Opteron setup if you are planning on upgrading that system in the future.

 

[zephyrprime]

What about the Duron? I bet the Barton will become the new Duron eventually.

 

[mrman3k]

That is true, the current Athlon XP line will become the budget AMD line.

 

[pspada]

Originally posted by: solofly

Originally posted by: pspada
Yes, if they do come out with any more chips, perhaps a 3300+ and/or 3400+, but that's it, since they'd have to move to something lower than the current .13 microns to accomplish that, and it's just not worth it for the Athlon XP line. However, you can purchase the Opteron now, since the Athlon 64 is likely to be just a version of Opteron chip that's optimized for single processor desktop systems.

I don't think you can buy a mobo for Opteron yet...

http://www.amdboard.com/opteron_boards.html

 

[Jeff7181]

Opterons have a large number of pins... I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously good because they needed that for the design, but I wonder if the number of pins can be related to a faster or slower processor. Like maybe more pins = more ins and outs for data, which would make it faster... or maybe more pins = CPU is more dependant on motherboard for it's speed because of all the communication it must do through all those pins.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: mrman3k
That is true, the current Athlon XP line will become the budget AMD line.

i seriously doubt there will be a buget line of amd processors. Duron was the only budget cpu amd had last time i recall. And it failed, for a few bucks more you would get a cpu that is much faster. Is the athlon thunderbird a budget processor now? No. The Athlon XP is both fast and not to expensive, so they dont need a budget chip beacause it is already cheap. Same goes with the Athlon 64, there will be really cheap ones, but the fastest ones will be expensive.