AMD Ships 1-GHz Athlon

Intel Holds Its Own; Pentium III-800s Soar

The PC WorldBench 2000 ratings of all the Athlon-1GHz systems look pretty similar to the fastest 800-MHz Intel Pentium III system we've tested to date, from Gateway. That system scored a 156.

Why would the two 1-GHz Athlon systems score so similarly to an 800-MHz PIII? Probably because the latest PIII chips have an on-die, full-speed 256-KB L2 cache.

The current Athlon chips have an off-die, half-speed 512-KB cache. The PIII's on-die L2 cache offers more of a performance boost than the larger, off-die L2 cache of the Athlon. (Nor is the tested Gateway PIII system running Rambus.)

AMD recognizes the off-die L2's limitations. Company executives have said they will launch "Thunderbird," an improved Athlon processor with an on-die, full-speed L2 cache, between April and June. There's no word yet on the initial frequency speed of that chip or the size of its L2 cache.

AMD Snubs Intel

AMD's 1-GHz Athlon announcement comes months ahead of its stated release date, and apparently hit under arch-rival Intel's radar. In recent months, Intel has been forced to crank up the frequencies on its Pentium III chips to keep pace with the once-trailing AMD. Intel announced its PIII-800 last December before it could produce the chip in full volume, causing some vendors to delay shipping systems with the newest chips for months.

Intel seemed poised to jump back in front in February when it showed production-ready 1-GHz PIII machines from Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM at the Intel Developer's Forum. Executives said the chip would soon ship in limited quantities, and in volume after the middle of the year.

But AMD got there first. Spokesperson Drew Prairie says the company was able to launch the processor early because "things just came together nicely." In addition to the 1-GHz chip, AMD is announcing its 900- and 950-MHz Athlon chips Monday. Prairie declined to predict how the accelerated launch date might change the rest of AMD's road map, or how fast the next processor leap might be.

Does Speed Sacrifice Quality?

Is the accelerated production of such high-speed chips hurting processor quality? That's unlikely, says Nathan Brookwood, chip analyst for Insight 64.Neither AMD's 1-GHz Athlon chip or the expected 1-GHz Pentium III chip from Intel is a brand-new processor, he says. Rather, each is a refinement of existing designs. If either company were skipping tests on a new design to rush it to market, problems might crop up, but that's not the case.

Instead, the 1-GHz chips expected from both companies are likely the results of careful monitoring of current production, he says. Since chip manufacturing is an imperfect science, a 1-GHz chip can come from a line producing slower chips.

Traditionally, those high-speed chips are pulled out and held like museum pieces, but now both companies test them for reliability, ship them out, and charge top dollar for them, Brookwood says.

"The 1-GHz mark is so emotionally laden and full of marketing potential," he says, both companies want to reach it first.

Brookwood expects a 1-GHz photo finish, with the trailing company releasing its chip within days instead of weeks.