Posted: June 6th, 2001
Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen

Introduction

During this time of the year, things really don’t get exciting in the computer industry. Sales slow down, product announcements reach a flat plateau and the buyer just isn’t excited about anything in particular except maybe about the 50 CDR-pack on sale down at the local store.

Things are usually slow around this year, because it’s off cycle for most companies. Things usually heat up during the autumn because that’s when there are a lot of shows going on. One major show that companies prepare for is Comdex, which occurs this year in November.

This year, there’s a little more activity going on in the processor market more than ever before. AMD is ramping up CPU speeds and selling them faster than McDonald’s sells its nuggets. Today marks the release of yet another AMD record -- the launch of the 1.4GHz “Thunderbird” Athlon. But wait! Didn’t we just have the release of the 760MP chipset and the Athlon MP yesterday? Yes we did and today is another fine day for product announcements from AMD.

Right now, a huge computer show called Computex is happening in Taipei, China. Every year, manufacturers gather to launch and showcase their new technologies and this year, AMD isn’t hanging around just for fun. With the release of the 760MP chipset, we’ll begin to see a wave of new motherboards based on it and an upcoming 76x chipset. Currently, the major problem with the 760MP chipset is that there’s only one board manufacturer and it’s Tyan. While Tyan is a great company and its Thunder K7 is an awesome board, the price is way beyond what general consumers and gamers can dish for. Thus, we will have to wait for the upcoming chipset from AMD which is said to be used on boards that are in the $200 USD range. With it, consumers can get all the nifty features of the 760MP chipset at a fraction of the cost and put the savings into the second processor.

Wouldn’t you know, around that time, the 1.4GHz TBird will be highly affordable. Timing is everything and so far, AMD seems to be doing an excellent job of staying on track and on schedule.

With that in mind, the new 1.4GHz Athlon is simply a revision in speed and nothing more. There aren’t any architectural improvements or anything that’s been tweaked. The performance gains are relative and increase accordingly like they have always been with TBird speed increments.

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