AMD Prepares to Ship Athlon XP 3200+

Advanced Micro Devices is readying a new desktop processor that could see the light of day as early as Friday as the chip maker tries to capture the PC performance crown.

The company will increase the performance of its existing processor core before introducing a brand-new 64-bit processor later this year. AMD's Athlon XP 3200+ with a 400-MHz frontside bus could make an appearance Friday, but will more likely be introduced next week, according to distributors.

The processor will be AMD's first product to support a 400-MHz frontside bus. It is the third desktop chip released with AMD's Barton core, which increased the amount of cache available in the previous Thoroughbred core.

The Athlon XP 3200+ is available for preorder from several distributors. One distributor suggests the chip will ship Friday, while others expect a release in the middle of next week.

An AMD spokesperson declined to comment on unannounced products.

Clues and Competition

AMD cut the price of its current performance leader, the Athlon XP 3000+, on April 22 from $588 to $325. Chip companies generally cut prices of their most expensive chips prior to the launch of a new processor.

Intel is also preparing a new desktop processor and chip set technology. The 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 will be Intel's second chip to feature the 800-MHz frontside bus. The first was briefly delayed due to an unspecified issue, but shipments of the 3-GHz Pentium 4 have resumed.

The 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 will also support Intel's hyperthreading technology, which makes a single processor look like two processors to the operating system, increasing the amount of instructions the OS sends to the chip. Those extra instructions can be processed by unused execution units in a processor. Intel is expected to bring hyperthreading down to slower chips in the Pentium 4 product line.

Chip Sets to Match

Both new processors require new motherboards and chip sets to support the increased frontside bus speeds. The frontside bus connects the CPU with the main memory, and increasing the speed at which data travels down that main pathway increases the overall performance of the chip.

Several AMD-affiliated chip set and motherboard vendors have already announced products that support a 400-MHz frontside bus, and Intel is expected to announce its Springdale chip set on or around the date of the 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 launch.

Springdale will be the second Intel chip set to support an 800-MHz frontside bus. The chip giant released the Canterwood chip set in April.

The new chips will tide over the enthusiast market for the latest and greatest processors until a pair of scheduled launches this fall. Intel will release Prescott, its first chip based on 90-nanometer process technology, in the second half of this year.

AMD's counterpart to the 64-bit Opteron, the Athlon64, is expected to launch in September.