Chimpzilla will be spilling the beans on its latest weapons in the battle against you-know-who on Monday at a lavish bash at the Paris Ritz. Plans for moving to DDR memory and details on upcoming SMP Athlons will be announced in what cynics might describe as a spoiling tactic coming just a month before Intel debuts the Pentium 4.

The official launch of the 760 chipset should significantly-boost Athlon performance with its support for a 266MHz FSB and double data rate SDRAM in both high-end 266MHz PC-2100 and the midrange 200MHz PC-1600 flavours.

But AMD supporters' glee over the new arrivals should be tempered on cost grounds as the new systems will not be significantly cheaper than rival P4 offerings.

Pundits reckon that 760-based Athlons should cost between $1800 and $2500, compared with Intel's Rambus-equipped Pentium 4s which will initially be in the >$2k range, but rapidly drop down into the >$1.5k bracket in Q1 next year.

The Register will be popping over to Paris on Monday, so we'll fill you in on the details then. ®