Coppermine based Pentium IIIs will hit speeds of almost 800MHz sometime in Q2 next year, according to the latest leaks from Chipzilla’s roadmap. Internal Intel charts show a 733MHz (133MHz FSB with a 5.5x clock multiplier) part aimed at systems in the $1.5 - $2K price range and a mysterious '7XX' part for systems in the over $2K bracket. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate that a 6x multiplier would result in a speed of 798MHz. Due to ongoing Camino misery, Intel has pulled the venerable 440BX chipset off the train to the gulag and now plans to keep selling the Seattle 2 mobo well into Q2 next year. Although only a 100MHz FSB board, the latest BIOS rev already enables the SE440BX-2 to support the first Coppermine PIIIs up to 700MHz. The troublesome Camino i820 chipset is now targeted for early Q1 2000 with the 810e entry-level chipset being pushed upmarket to support midrange systems as well as cheap ‘n’ cheerful Celeron boxes. We confidently predict that the 820 to fail to appear in this timescale – prove us wrong, Intel.. Little Celeron is billed to hit 566MHz by Q2 next year in systems costing between $900 and $1,000. Chipzilla sees the cheapest Celeron boxes costing less than $799 with a 500MHz processor. Evidence of continuing chipset woes can be found at the high end too, with 4 and 8 way Xeon systems being limited to a 100MHz FSB while faster 133MHz FSB parts will only run in dual processor configurations. PIII Xeons will hit 750MHz at 100MHz FSB and 1Mb or 2Mb level 2 caches for quad capable systems, while if two processors are enough for your needs, you can have an 800MHz 133FSB part with 256K of on-die cache. Real power freaks wanting 8way systems costing more than $50K will still be stuck with a 100MHz FSB and a relatively leisurely top speed of 550MHz until at least the middle of next year. ®