AMD Athlon K7 NDA expires…

A stack of US AMD non-disclosure agreements have expired, allowing various hardware sites to spill the beans on the K7-Athlon. Ace's Hardware Page, Fullon3D, Tom's Hardware, Sharky Extreme, AMD Zone and CPU Review have all taken the opportunity to get their contributions in early, that is on the stroke of midnight on the 8th of August. Anandtech points to these sites, as do we, below. Meanwhile, over here, JC invites his readers to even mark the reviews for writing style... Tom's Pages have some nice but rather graphics intensive pictures of chips and block diagrams of the K7. Many details had already been comprehensively leaked, as NDAs found it hard to stay kept in the global world of the Internet. Later on today, a number of hardware firms including IBM, Compaq and others are expected to announce K7 Athlon systems. Ace's -- which devotes 29 pages to a review -- points out that to overclock the K7, people will need a special add-on which we're sure will arrive in the twinkling of an eye. That site also points out there are additional 3DNow! instructions in the K7 -- which was also widely predicted. Many questions are also answered at AMD's own site here, which we expect to be updated later today. AMD has also managed to sneak in a 650MHz Athlon, as revealed here earlier. Most of the sites point out that the Athlon is a bit of a power consumer, explaining why it has such a large heat sink. And again, most, if not all, point out that the AMD Athlon K7 busts Intel's bum on the benchmark front on apparently all fronts. Fullon3D posts an interview with AMD, where it seems to suggest it won't reach 1GHz until the year 2000. Don't forget that AMD wants to underplay its hand on this, and other futures. Further, AMD suggests there that it may well socket the Athlon K7 in the future, while it confirmed it will move the K6 to .18 micron (and in copper, as revealed here this time last week). More on the Athlon later today... ® Our last week's news coverage AMD manages to undercut Intel on K7 pricing Intel may snap up AMD AMD K7 strategy is a tightrope walk AMD uses Intel Inside top Fab Sandpit AMD+Dresden Sandpit II AMD to intro non-legacy push AMD's Sanders puts two fingers up to Intel AMD positions K7 Athlon for enterprise Via-AMD finalise chipset deal AMD+Dresden Sandpit I AMD succeeds in producing copper K6 Web Hardware Sites Anandtech Ace's Fullon3D AMD Zone Tom's Hardware CPU Review Sharky Extreme