OK, I'm waiting to get my hands on P4. On my company's expense, at least for now
You know, all this PIII / Athlon talk is missing the fact that from compiler's point of view it's all PentiumPro stuff.
In other words, I'm using /G6 optimization in MSVC for the last 5 years. I'm bored.
Enter P4: it will be (finally!) something with new
architecture enough to have a new /G7 switch. I know, I've tried beta version of Intel C/C++ compiler, V5.0.
In essense: I'm not looking for a higher performance of already-compiled software, but for a good kick on my server thing when I will recompile it with /G7
And yes, someone promised my company to deliver SMP Ithanium system in the nearest future.
Very likely I will play with it as well.
Most of my friends (programmers) who built home computers recently used dual-Celeron way to do it, as single-CPU box is a bore oldy-moldy news, and only a craze will pay for a dual-PIII box.
In essence: Only after at least dual-CPU Athlons will hit the street, I will consider them as an option for me.
Till then - sorry, folks, no Athlons, please.
I'm a software engineer, and many things may be observed only on SMP computers. Unfortunately, there is not that much choice here - x86-wise.
Intel sucks, there is no doubt. To disable half of a cache in Celerons.. to lock it to the same freq - 66MHz bus Pentium Classic had some 7?! years ago - it's really, really sucks. Their prices are sky-high.
Let's see those shiny dual-Athlons of the future