http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/print-it?id=3c98da541&t=1

Read what Jerry Sanders said about what Duron is for, and let's put the question about using Duron on servers to an end.

Jerry: The [AMD] Athlon MP [processor] has a dual processor for servers and dual-processor workstations. We’ve got the little brother of the Athlon, the [AMD] Duron [processor], for mobile or for low-cost servers. At the end of next year, there will be a 64-bit processor called the “Hammer.” That’s the internal code name, [and it has] a remarkable capability in that it is based on a Microsoft-supported instruction set developed by AMD.

Heck, at the time it was introduced, mhz for mhz, the Duron smoked most of the non-value line Intels. It's a good little chip. More cache (XP) is always a good thing in any server situation, though. That's why P3 Xeons with 2 megs of onchip cache are so smokin', even though their logic isn't necessarily competitive with some alternatives out there.

True true, that's why the Sun boxes are still smoking the Wintel boxes (aside from the fact that they use Unix & not Winblows 'I couldn't resist) Their cache are usually 1-4 MB. Even on the sparc20s, and how long have the 20's been around?

True; Duron's are good for low-end servers - just don't put on in to run a REALLY popular high-bandwidth site. I'd go Intel (I'm an Intel Zealot), just because of there good track record.

Duron's were designed as an economy processor (Like to Intel Celeron). I think they are wonderful for low-end servers however the Athlon's work best for high-ends.

AMD is to introduce the 64 bit Hammer chip at the end of 2002, its performance is said to be > 3400 GHZ, built on 0.13u and SOI (silion on insulator) technology with 103mm die size (much smaller than p4).

The hammer will run existing 32 bit apps unmodified. Linux already has hammer support in its builds.

Hammer has hyper-transport built-in, 20 times faster than PCI

I run an 800mhz Duron through my desktop with 256 mg SDRAM and can comfortably pound it in both doc work (MS Word) and graphics work (Photoshop, Fireworks). Coupled with an nVidia GeForce II MX 64 it runs 3D games without a second thought. Heat is minimal.

With that in mind, running it as a server CPU I doubt you'll see any issues. Compared to the Celeron I feel it's a mile ahead. While we run PIII coppermines on our servers I wouldn't get too edgey using Durons.

Greg Moore

AMD is to introduce the 64 bit Hammer chip at the end of 2002, its performance is said to be > 3400 GHZ, built on 0.13u and SOI (silion on insulator) technology with 103mm die size (much smaller than p4).

3400GHZ?????? Did you mean MHZ? Because that would mean that the new chip will run at 3400000MHZ????

LOL :D Sounds like its going to be nice though.