AMD announces 700-MHz Athlon, with Compaq and IBM on board

AMD announces 700-MHz Athlon, with Compaq and IBM on board
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today announced its new 700-MHz Athlon processor, and both Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. have announced they will offer systems based on the chip, the industry's fastest x86 architecture.

AMD is positioning the 700-MHz Athlon against Intel Corp.'s top-of-the-line 600-MHz Pentium III. The Sunnyvale company claims the new MPU outperforms the Pentium III in such applications as digital content creation, 3-D graphics, commercial 3-D modeling, image compression, speech recognition, and most mainstream applications.

Dana Krelle, vice president of marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group, said that more than 75 system manufacturers now use the Athlon chip. AMD brought out the first Athlons under a cloud of negative earnings reports and a worsening underdog position to Intel in PC microprocessors (see June 24 story).

"AMD continues to lead the way in offering the highest-performing PC processor, enabling Compaq to deliver the highest-performing, fastest Internet PCs available," said Mark Vena, director of desktop product marketing at Compaq Computer Corp. in Houston. "The 700-MHz AMD Athlon processor is a powerful addition to the Presario family of PC systems."

The 700-MHz Athlon processor is priced at $849 each in 1,000 unit quantities.