Gateway has done a U-turn over its plans to launch an Athlon-based PC. The world’s second largest direct selling PC vendor was tipped to build systems based on the Athlon, but two weeks ago mysteriously reversed its decision, according to Forbes. Gateway described the move as "a pure business decision", which Forbes said meant Intel had waved a big discount carrot under Gateway’s nose, which the vendor obligingly ran after. This soft dollar deal, and big discounts on 600 MHz Pentium II chips, are believed to have swung Gateway’s decision in what was thought to be a $20 million package. The Forbes article added that AMD pricing was already starting crack under the weight of Intel’s cuts. On 1 August, Intel priced its 600MHz PIII at $669. Athlon prices now stand at $249, $499 and $615, and Intel is expected to slash prices on its PIII 500 chip this month. Compaq and IBM have already officially lent their support to the AMD chip. In the UK, leading system builders such as Time, Mesh and Dabs are backing Athlon. Could there be any substance in the persistent rumours (which have surfaced online only in a couple of hardware sites)that 100 per cent Intel customer Dell could join the Athlon parade? But the universe will have to wait until 16 August to see which others will follow suit. ® Brides of Athlon AMD goes public on Athlon 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