IDT Winchip 2-3D

The Winchip 2 is probably not the chip you've been waiting for to stick in your next system, and the odds are against you ever going out and specifically looking for the "latest Winchip 2." If you do happen to be in a predicament where an upgrade is necessary and it seems like there are no options other than a new motherboard with a new processor (sometimes even entailing a RAM/video card upgrade depending on your system configuration), the Winchip 2 is a pretty decent alternative to the sometimes unreliable and costly overdrive processor upgrades.

The 225MHz model as tested by AnandTech should retail for less than $50, and with a little searching you may be able to hit that $40 mark, however finding the chips in stock may be a bigger deal than you think, IDT never grew too popular in the states with the C6, and the Winchip 2 may unfortunately follow in its older brother's footsteps.

The future of IDT, as stated by their roadmap, is to basically continue the journey for the best low-cost microprocessor on the planet. Later this year, IDT will begin shipping the Winchip 3, which will bump the speed up to 266MHz and include a full 128KB of L1 cache to avoid including a costly L2 cache on-die as AMD will experiment with on their K6-3 processor. Towards the end of 1999, we should be able to expect IDT's newly redesigned core to begin to surface in announcements of the Winchip 4, a processor that should operate in the 400 - 500MHz frequency range while maintaining a high level of backwards compatibility.

While IDT is still a few steps away from stealing the lime light from their closest competitors, there will be at least a few users out there that will be pleased to know that their 2 year old investments are still secure with IDT behind the wheel.