AMD has launched the Athlon MP 1900+ and its latest multi-processing chipset, the 760MPX.

The launch of the MP 1900+ follows the arrival of the XP 1900+ a wee while back and extends AMD's use of its Quantispeed marchitecture, which downplays clock frequencies for a rating that effectively measures the chip's performance relative to Intel's Pentium 4.

Indeed, nowhere on AMD's MP 1900+ launch release could we find any reference to clock speed - despite promises made by the company at the XP launch that it had no intention of hiding its processors' clock speeds.

The 760MPX, meanwhile, comprises the 762 north bridge and 768 south bridge chips. Says AMD, the DDR SDRAM-based "760MPX chipset offers extended performance through a 66MHz/64-bit/32-bit PCI bus and a feature-rich peripheral bus controller that provides PCI-to-PCI bridging capability".

The 760MPX, despite its announcement today, won't ship in volume until Q2 2002. The Athlon MP 1900+ will ship this quarter for $319 a pop (in batches of 1000 chips). ®