Athlon K7 motherboards are more expensive than their Pentium III equivalents, according to Taiwanese OEM magazine Eurotrade. Motherboards from MicroStar and GigaByte are typically three times more expensive than equivalent Pentium III mobos, making any price reduction AMD has managed on its Athlon family negligible, Eurotrade comments. This could change if and when chipsets from Via, Ali and Sis start to be adopted big time by other Taiwanese manufacturers, says Eurotrade. And That will depend on AMD supplying Athlons in volume. On the bright side for AMD, Eurotrade cites benchmarks from Mercury Research, published on The Meter, which show the Athlon delivers a typical 14 per cent performance boost over Pentium III technology. The Meter also confirms a mass of other benchmarks from Web sites, showing that the AMD chip trounces Intel's current offerings. The Eurotrade story on the Athlon can be found here. ®