First post, by piatd
- Rank
- Newbie
I'm looking for evidence that the PIII 800 (either E or EB versions) was available for purchase and use by an individual in 1999, either as a component or part of a system/bundle.
Anandtech noted in its December 20, 1999 review that "[l]ike the Athlon 800, the Pentium III 800 will begin shipping sometime early next year (most likely in January)."
To get my bearings, I looked at advertisements for boutique and multinational system builders in the January 2000 issues of popular US PC magazines: PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, and Maximum PC.
Alienware: PIII 733 (in Area51 system)
Aberdeen: PIII 733 (in system) & Athlon 750 (bundled with Slot A mobos)
Compaq: PIII 700 *snicker* (in Presario 5700T-700 system)
CyberMax: Athlon 750 (in system)
Dell: PIII 733 (in Dimension XPS B733r system)
HyperSonic: PIII 733 (in system)
The Athlon appeared to be available at 750 MHz and the PIII at 733 MHz. This is not definitive, as I don't know when in December these issues hit newsstands, let alone when they were written. Still, if the PIII 800 had been listed here, I could probably conclude that is was available in 1999.
Jumping ahead to 2000, I waybacked (is this a verb yet?) two popular US boutique builders for their fastest processors:
gamepc.com for Jan 22: Athlon: 750 MHz , PIII: 733 MHz
This is especially telling, because gamepc also indicates the availability status of each part: in stock, backorder (1-2 weeks), or out of stock (indefinite).
alienware.com for February 8 Athlon: 800 MHz , PIII: 733 MHz
The PIII 800 is nowhere to be found. What say you?