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AMD intros 750MHz Athlon, 533MHz K6-2

Gigahertz secret weapon reserved for AD 2000

While major x.86 manufacturer Intel still struggles to supply its major customers with .18 micron Pentium IIIs at speeds of 600MHz and above, AMD will formally announce its 750MHz Athlon processor today, using a .18 micron process technology. We exclusively revealed the date of the release of the 750MHz at the end of last month, here. And AMD has also upped the speed on its K6-2 family and will announce a 533MHz member of the family today. Intel will introduce a 533MHz Celeron on the 10th of January. The Athlon is now supported by many of the largest PC companies in the world, including Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens and IBM. Getting branded Athlon machines from the big vendors in Europe may be difficult. Last week, Big Blue told The Register it was only selling Pentium IIIs here in the UK. However, many other UK vendors are expected to offer machines with high clock speed Athlons. Gateway is expected to announce an Athlon processor today, while HP may also take that step soon. Dell is expected to remain as loyal as ever to Intel, despite having similar problems with supply of Pentium IIIs from the chip giant. Sources tell us that AMD may well still announce availability of a 1GHz Athlon on the 10 January next year. Last Friday, we revealed that Intel will intro a 750MHz Pentium on that day. The sources said that AMD will make the decision based on sales of members of its existing Athlon family, and on Intel's reaction to both the launches and on its own introductions. There is no technical reason why the 1GHz Athlon should not be introduced in early January. AMD is hoping to maximise its profits by keeping the existing prices of its Athlon processors stable. The 750MHz Athlon costs around $795/1000, while Intel's premier Coppermine, the 733MHz Pentium III with 133MHz bus speed, costs $826/1000. Intel will cut its Coppermine prices on 12th of December, we are reliably informed. Although the MHz race is a comparatively trivial matter, with both AMD and Intel playing the Tweedledee-Tweedledum game, pricing and availability of the processors is far more important. The day after Intel announced its Coppermine family, on the 25th of October, The Register saw internal documents from the chip giant which showed the extent of its problems supplying the parts. Although this position has improved in recent weeks, there are still serious problems with its high end Coppermine processor, the 733MHz Pentium III. The battle between Tweedledum and TweedleAMD AMD piles on Intel pressure with 750MHz Athlon AMD Athlons undercut equivalent Pentium IIIs Intel to intro Coppermine 750MHz PIII Jan 10th AMD wins major battle in Intel price war Intel loses big industry face to AMD over Coppermines Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens switch to AMD Athlons for Yule machines Big PC vendors furious over Intel Coppermine yields Intel trashes huge Gateway rebate scheme Intel will cut Coppermine prices sooner than expected Pentium III 800 brought forward to Q1 next year Huge shortages, technical problems hit Intel Coppermine debut

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