The Pentium Xeon platform is to overtake PIII in the performance stakes for the first time. The high-end, high-priced Pentium III Xeon will overtake its little brother in MHz terms in September. The two ranges have always matched each other evenly since the launch of the original Pentium II Xeon last year, but now the Slot 2 chip is set to carry the performance banner alone. And if early reports from Intel insiders are to be believed, Coppermine is yielding so well that it could conceivably launch at 733MHz. (See story: Coppermine could finish AMD off for good) But at the moment, the plan is that the first Coppermine Pentium III will appear at 600MHz , while Xeon will hit 667MHz. Both parts will feature 256K on-die L2 cache. Prices (1K quantities) are expected to be something like this: The desktop part is expected to hit 667MHz sometime in Q4. Notice that the cache sizes are the dominant factor in the Xeon pricing model, so that if Coppermine launches higher than 667MHz, the price will remain pretty much the same. On die caches larger than 256K are in the pipeline - watch this space. ®