#Alpha
> Very true. I read somewhere recently that the 620 will run around 20-25%
> behind the Alpha, but those were preliminary numbers.
I suspect that the announcement mid this month with reveal numbers better than
original IBM/Moto forcast from 18 months ago, but probably slightly behind the
300Mhz Alpha. I would expect that you are fairly close to the correct number.
> Otoh, I expect the 620 will deliver more power per dollar. Do you have
> any idea how much the 620 will cost?
Been kinda quiet, but I would guess near $1,000. This is based on very little
data, so I'm not staking anything on that! The guess work puts the 604 at
perhaps $500-600, and the 620 at $1,000. Expect to see dropping Pentium prices
to put downward pressure on these prices. You might see these prices drop 30%,
or more, after a few months.
You will see 620 class machines in the $6,000 range in two years is my bet.
But I think the best price performance may actually be the 120Mhz 601 for quite
a while. With the 604 filling the higher middle ground. The 604 will need a
die-shrink to be really cost competitive.
But on the 620/Alpha issue, if I could get 80% of the speed, for 1/2 the price,
and be able to run hundreds of native commerical grade programs and thousands
of emulated programs, that will be cool!
That will make the PPC620 the first very high end CPU to be able to run
shrinkwrapped commerical software that can be bought on the budget of a PC
owner. What passes for productivity software (word proccessors, spread sheets,
etc) in the UNIX world is scandalous.
Just think about software written for a $1,800 home machine being able to run
full blast on a high end workstation.
Oh well.
—- Andrew