Sources at Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer Asus have denied rumours that the company will withdraw its Athlon CPU motherboard, the K7M, from the market, as a result of pressure from Intel.

Product manager Joe Hsieh said he personally dealt with Intel-CPU motherboards and did not handle the K7M, but said: "The answer should be, we are still making K7 products for OEM customers... I think perhaps you should just ignore that [rumour]... nothing has changed at all."

A marketing representative, who did not wish to be named, also said Asus was ready to ship the K7M, but would send it to systems customers first. Official information on the K7M is hard to find.

The Asus Web site apparently contains no information on the motherboard. Other Taiwanese manufacturers admit they downplay products that they see as unpopular with Intel. These include products which use AMD's Athlon CPU or VIA's PC133 chipsets. Motherboard makers depend on supplies of chipsets and technical data from Intel to meet market demand and develop new products on time.

A high-ranking Asus executive, who requested anonymity, said: "I have no comment about that [the K7M]." He continued: "Nobody can talk about the K7. It's a very sensitive topic, we don't want any employee to release any K7-related information to anybody." ®