Replacing The Athlon LE-1620

I have had an Athlon LE-1620 for about three or four months now, and it has been one of my favorite processors ever. The large 1mb L2 cache really seems to make the processor scream (for the budget sector) and after comparing benchmarks, the processor at stock speed (2.4ghz) comes out just about dead even with an overclocked Celeron 430 (1.8 ghz base speed, overclocked to 2.38ghz).

While AMD prices have started to go up (AMD is re-releasing older Athlon X2 models in new energy efficient models, and literally doubling the prices; the Athlon LE-1620 is still in production, but the price also has actually gone up a couple dollars since I purchased the chip in January), Intel prices have come down. For the same $45 I paid for the Athlon LE-1620, I can now purchase a new in box Celeron E1200, which is a dual core processor with 512K of L2 cache. This is really impressive, considering AMD has always been the cheaper of the two chipmakers.

I really enjoy the Athlon LE; the large 1mb L2 cache, very cool operating temperatures (I run the chip without a fan on, with Cool 'n Quiet enabled) and overclocking capabilities (If ever needed, the chip has no problem overclocking to 3ghz). At the same time, with the price of Intel dual core chips dropping it seems as if a move back to dual core country is imminent.

I'm in the process of building a computer for my future father in law for Father's Day. I bought several items off of eBay including a Celeron 420 (1.6ghz) for $15 and a Pentium Dual Core e2180 (2.0ghz) for $40. Right now, my plans are giving him the AMD LE-1620 and using the e2180 in my system (with the appropriate motherboards, of course).

I'm going to run various benchmarks between the two systems (the e2180 will be overclocked to either 2.4 ghz or 2.6 ghz) and see how they compare. For some reason, I really can't see how the Athlon LE-1620 is going to compare to a dual core Core based processor (since it was a very close match compared to a single core, Core based Celeron clocked @ 2.38 ghz with only 1/2 the L2 cache [On a side note, at stock speeds, the LE-1620 wipes the floor with a Celeron 430, and would probably destroy a 420 (1.6ghz)]).

AMD lost the performance sector, and it appears that it will be losing the budget sector very soon also.

Waiting For Via Isaiah

It's really weird, but I've personally been waiting for the Via Isaiah processor since it was originally mentioned back in 2004 under the "C4, C5, etc" titles. Via quietly released the C7 processors, which were basically C3s with added features, and have been working on the secret Isaiah platform since.

I've always had a interest in Via processors ever since they came out with the Via C3 socket 370 processors in 2001. The processors were clocked at 500 - 733 mhz, and were quite cheap for the time (under $50), and TigerDirect said they were excellent budget performance processors ( a major lie). At the time, I had a socket 370 533mhz Pentium III processor and because I wasn't the smartest when it came to upgrading PCs at the time, I was planning to purchase a 733mhz C3 processor to replace my PIII.

I ended up not doing it, and instead went on and purchased a 950mhz Duron processor several months later.

In the years following the C3 CPUs, Via continue to release several different C3 and C7 processors, the later being soldered directly on motherboards. As the benchmarks came, these processors were pretty much absolutely terrible, while before they were launched Via would release a couple benchmark graphs trying to state that the processors consumed little power, yet were stronger than Intel's processors in specific benchmarks.

So what am I awaiting the Isaiah processors?

Because of one simple reason; I want to see if Via and Centaur are lying again. Via previously on several times have stated in the past that the C7 processors would be able to reach 2.5ghz, and actually be able to outperform Pentium 4 CPUs. This of course never happend. In the past several months, Via has stated that its new Isaiah architecture is not only cheaper than Intel's offerings, but also stronger in benchmarks. At the same time, Via and Centuar haven't released many 'samples' of the processors, and have provided only a few benchmark results (which could easily be fabricated, as Via has done in the past).

With the Isaiah processors supposedly coming in the very near future, I am anxious to see if Via is simply just lying again, or if they really do have a revolutionary CPU design. Because of the lack of news around the new processors which are again supposed to be released in the next couple of months, I am betting that the Isaiah architecture will just be another low performance processor platform.

But I am still anxiously waiting in hopes that I am wrong. Still, I wouldn't be worried at all if I was Intel, but I would be very worried if I was nVidia after their announcement of the $45 Vista Premium board / cpu / gpu.