No AMD Athlons faster than 1.6GHz this year

AMD won't have a 2GHz Athlon out this year and the company's fans probably won't see one before Q2 2002.

So says roadmap data posted on Danish (?) Web site ComputerDK. According to the site's handy little table, the Athlon will, as expected, jump up to 1.5GHz and 1.53GHz during Q3, but the best AMD can manage for Q4 is 1.6GHz. Q1 2002 will see the Athlon's clock speed upped to 1.73GHz.

We expect the 1.53GHz Athlon to be introduced next month when AMD launches the third CPU line based on its Palomino core: its mainstream desktop Athlons. In May, it introduced the Palomino-based Mobile Athlon 4. Last month, it was the turn of the workstation and server-oriented Athlon MP.

AMD recently released a 1.4GHz desktop Athlon based on the previous iteration of the CPU's core, Thunderbird.

We're not sure the source of ComputerDK's information, but since the Intel data included in the article is reasonably accurate, we guess the AMD roadmap is too.

The site's data has the Palomino-derived Duron (aka Morgan) out next quarter at 950MHz and 1GHz, rising to 1.1GHz in Q4 and 1.2GHz in Q1 2002.

Intel, meanwhile, is set to release its 2GHz Pentium 4 next quarter. Athlons are said to perform rather better than equivalently-clocked P4s, so holding back on high clock speed Athlons may not hurt AMD too much. In any case, why fight a clock speed battle too fiercely when demand for top-end systems is low? Besides, when the PC market does pick up again, analysts reckon buyers will buy on price rather than performance, which, it's thought, will also favour AMD's products. ®

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Related Link

ComputerDKAMD og Intel Roadmap (in Danish)