Kryotech SuperG Athlon 1000MHz

The SuperG is obviously the fastest x86 system on the market, and Kryotech has definitely gotten their act together with making sure that enough resellers can get their hands on these systems in order to provide these to the public.  Kryotech is still selling the bare bones systems (this includes the CPU, motherboard, case and cooler) from their on-line store for $2495, but you can also get them fully configured with peripherals from their authorized resellers.  Next week, we will be taking a look at one such system from one of their resellers, SYS Technology, Inc. 

With air-cooled Athlons currently available at 700MHz, and the 750/800MHz Athlons due out for public sale early next month, a 1000MHz Athlon at this point wouldn’t be worth the added price premium to business users or gamers looking for the latest and greatest.  In a few months time we can expect to see air-cooled Athlons approach 900MHz+, thus making the SuperG obsolete.  So why on Earth would Kryotech even bother producing the SuperG?

Unlike the Cool K6-X series of Kryotech systems, the SuperG is actually ideal for high end workstations that require the fastest performance available today.  Especially for those individuals working off of grant money that are given a certain amount to spend at one given time, the SuperG makes the perfect product if you have the money now and you won’t be given an opportunity like this again. 

Unfortunately, the low cache speed of the SuperG in comparison to the newly released Pentium III 800 makes the 800 an overall better value for some applications that are very L2 cache dependent, especially applications that contain Pentium III specific SSE optimizations, a rapidly growing population. 

Overall, the SuperG is a very powerful and quite fast system to use, but it is definitely not worth the price premium.  The SuperG does come with more of a guarantee of future CPU compatibility than previous Cool K6-X systems, whether or not this will allow you to simply stick in an Athlon with on-die L2 cache and run it at a much higher clock frequency is up to you to decide.  Chances are that you will be able to use the SuperG with future Slot-A CPUs on future Slot-A motherboards, so long as they meet the layout requirements of the KryoCavity.  Fitting even the largest motherboards into the KS-298 case shouldn’t be a problem at all, the main thing is making sure that the area around the Slot-A connector is as unpopulated as possible by high standing capacitors and other obstructing components.

Once again, it seems like Kryotech is offering the fastest of a certain class of CPUs at an added price premium, but the performance advantage they offer just never seems to be enough to justify selling the systems to the majority of users out there.  The SuperG definitely has its own niche and what an expensive one it is.