AMD K7: Speculation

The K7 looks like a damn fast CPU on paper. Since I did not get to personally see the K7 in action, nor do I have any benchmarks to base my opinions on, It is going to be hard for me to tell you how well I think the K7 will perform.

128K L1 cache...so what?!

The 128K L1 cache looks good on paper, but will we really see the benefits of it in the real world? When it comes to business applications like Microsoft Word, the answer is a definite yes; however, the Quake3 and the next 3D Studio may not really see much of a benefit from the L1 cache. Granted there will be some performance increase; however, don't count on the doubled amount of L1 cache to increase your Q3 framerates by 20%, or even 10%, for that matter.

On card L2 cache

Since the K7 is also geared towards servers, a large, fast L2 cache is necessary. Large, fast L2 cache benefits multiple processor systems greatly because they prevent the CPUs from accessing the main system RAM as much. If you have 2, or better yet 4, CPUs accessing the system RAM at the same time, there is going to be some serious slow downs, unacceptable slow downs in a server environment. For this reason, large, fast L2s are necessary, to reduce the strain on RAM. The faster L2 cache won't benefit games and number crunching applications as much as the L2 helps out multiprocessor servers, but don't expect it to sit there idly. The faster L2 cache will help increase overall system performance.

Superscalar, 9 issue, out-of-order [insert technical jargon here] ...

While the architecture improvements over previous generations are plenty, the K7's core is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Don't expect 2x PII performance because of the improved core, it simply won't happen. (If it does, I'll be the first one with a K7) I think the K7 will run neck to neck with Intel's latest chip out at the time. Mhz for Mhz, I'm betting on the K7 to outperform the Intel counterpart.

200mhz Bus

I neglected to talk much about this because I couldn't find enough information on EV6. The 200mhz bus will obviously help performance. Whether or not by a significant amount is a different issue. Remember the 66mhz vs 100mhz bus. In the case of the Pentium II, the performance increase was negligible, perhaps nonexistent. What's to stop the K7 from exhibiting the same  behavior? The L2 cache runs independent of the bus speed, like the Pentium II, so all that is really benefiting from 200mhz bus is the system RAM. Maybe AGP 4x will put the 200mhz bus to good use. But other than that, I don't see the 200mhz bus providing any really huge performance increase.

Slot A

I think that putting the K7 on Slot A was a bad idea. Even though Slot A is faster than Slot 1 (well, not the actual slot, but the protocol, etc.) , Slot A is implying competition with a CPU you DON'T want to compete with, Digitals 21264. The K7 is not the 21264's friend just because the run on the same motherboard. (The Pentium MMX and the K6 were never friends) The K7 may end up becoming the low-end Alpha alternative rather than the high-end Pentium II alternative. If this happens, AMD won't be too happy. I think that AMD should have chosen the safe route and released the K7 for Slot 1. This way the K7 would imply a more direct competition with the Pentium II plus offer the end-user a brighter upgrade path. (Slot 1 isn't dying anytime soon, while, Slot A, on the other hand, gives you two choices, "cheap" K7, or $2500+ 21264)

Gaming

Will it outperform Katmai (or the latest Intel chip out at the time)? I doubt it. KNI is superior to 3DNow, and I don't think AMDs newly designed pipelined FPU will make up for Katmai's advantage in the KNI area. (Since it isn't really used in SIMD optimized applications) Further, Intel hasn't really said much about Katmai, so, either they have nothing to say, or they have a lot of goodies they are keeping secret, the latter being the more probable, in my opinion. Only time will tell...

Business

K7 all the way. 128K L1 will play a big role in the K7's surpassing of the Pentium II in business applications.