Intel will sample 800MHz Pentium IIIs next Monday

Chip giant Intel will provide samples of 800MHz Pentium IIIs to its OEMs at the beginning of next week and will also announce several flavours of other of its desktop processors. The 750MHz Pentium III parts which were intended for release in January next year, will also be announced, sources close to Intel's plans have confirmed. But although Intel is likely to make a very big splash about the fact that it has a 800MHz Coppermine part and also Coppermine 750MHz parts, the whole question of this announcement raises several important questions. Providing samples to its OEMs -- the major PC manufacturers -- is not the same as supplying the chip in volume. The experience of people attempting to buy a 733MHz Coppermine Pentium III since October 25 bears witness to that. PC vendors will take time to evaluate the processors before they can build the 800MHz chip into their machines. There is a school of thought which thinks that Intel only started to sample its 733MHz processors shortly after it "announced" the 7xx processors at its last Developer Forum, in Palm Springs, in September. The 750MHz parts, however, will start to appear rather sooner than the 800MHz. We can expect to see 800MHz chips in machines round about February or March, in line with Intel's revised roadmap. As we correctly predicted last month, these Pentium III 750MHz parts cannot use the 133MHz front side bus (FSB). They will use the 100MHz multiplier bus, because of the basic rules of clocking things up. There are two flavours of the 750MHz part however, one being Slot 1 and the other using the infamous flip chip packaging. The two stories referenced below give details of the changes that Intel was going to make in January, but has now brought forward. Once more it appears that Intel has decided to take the marchitecture rather than the architecture route, possibly panicked into such action by AMD's success with the 750MHz Athlon which is available in large volumes. When Chipzilla panics, its great big galumphing feet can go in any direction that chaos theory doesn't predict. ® See also Intel to intro 750MHz CuMine PIII on January 10 Intel will cut Coppermine prices earlier than expected