AMD Athlon 700

Conclusion

What did we expect from the Athlon 700?  Everything we got from the Athlon 700.  The CPU is just a faster Athlon, which is definitely good for AMD for the time being, but what will it do in the long term?

Nothing much if Intel releases a drastically different architecture with their upcoming Coppermine CPU that completely blows the Athlon away.  But chances are that this won't be the case, and the Coppermine won't be anything more than the same Pentium III core that we're used to with 256KB on-die L2 cache running at clock speed. 

What the Athlon 700 does is it puts another step between Intel's fastest and AMD's fastest which is very good for the company.  But what it doesn't do is secure the performance title for AMD throughout the rest of the year and on into 2000.  Intel's Pentium III B doesn't do much with the i820 and RDRAM under Windows 98.  But under NT, and especially under high bandwidth applications such as 3D Studio MAX where a lot of data is being manipulated, the 133MHz FSB + RDRAM makes for a very competitive combo.  The Coppermine may push that competitive barrier even further, and may begin to threaten AMD's territory there.

So what does AMD have planned?  The Athlon is definitely going to hit 750MHz shortly, the rumors are all in place and the yields are there for AMD to hit that magical 750, but will they or will you do it first?  We all know that it is possible to overclock the Athlon, and it's just a matter of time before the motherboards with overclockable FSB settings begin getting into the hands of Athlon owners. 

The FIC SD11 already offers 120 and 133MHz FSB settings (x 2 = 240/266MHz) and there are quite a few motherboards in the works that offer FSB settings up to 150MHz in smaller increments.   Armed with an Athlon 700 and some good cooling, you better believe that the overclockers will be the first to hit 750MHz. 

Intel knows what the Athlon architecture can do, and the only thing AMD can do right now is make the Athlon faster.  So unless the Coppermine comes out on top with a superior architecture than the Athlon, it'll be highly unlikely that you'll see Intel back on top until the release of their next big thing. 

The good news is that a 700MHz Athlon drives the prices of the 650, 600, 550, and 500MHz Athlons down.  It also puts the pressure on Intel to compete so they'll lower their prices and work on cranking out similarly performing products.  So even if you're not in the market for the 700MHz wonder, you'll be affected by its release.  Isn't competition grand?

Now if we could only get some good motherboards...don't worry, November will hold some wonderful surprises...we hope ;)