Athlon: The beginning of the end

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday will release the Athlon XP 3200+ for desktops, the last scheduled member of a chip family that helped turn the company's fortunes around. The 3200+ features a 400MHz bus, faster than the 333MHz and 266MHz buses found in earlier Athlon-based computers, and runs at a slightly faster clock speed than other high-end Athlon chips, said John Crank, senior branding associate for AMD. Graphics chip maker Nvidia, among others, is adjusting its chipsets to complement the faster bus found on the processor.

Overall, the chip will be neck and neck in terms of performance with Intel's fastest products, Crank said. The chip holds about a 15 percent performance advantage over Intel's 3GHz Pentium 4 processor when the Pentium 4 is connected to a 533MHz bus, according to AMD benchmarks. Intel, though, recently came out with a new chipset that runs at 800MHz and plans on coming out with another 800MHz chipset and a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 soon, according to sources close to the company.

The 3200+ performance enhancements likely will represent a final high watermark for the original family of Athlon chips on desktops. Although another chip based on the Athlon design may emerge for notebooks, the company has no other desktop Athlons on its current product calendar, Crank said, unless AMD decides to add chips to the lineup to satisfy customer interest.

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