There's an overclocking guide for the Athlon Thunderbird onTweaktown, looking at increasing its mhz, as if it wasn't fast enough already.

PlanetHardware has a "Grudge Match" putting the Intel Pentium3 700mhz against the budget AMD Duron 700mhz. Not very surprisingly, the budget processor isn't a real contender against a real, normal priced cpu. But hey, its cheap ;)

The Register is also reporting that AMD is gonna cut the price of their 1Ghz Athlon by around 40%. This will happen some time this month once Intel launches their 1.1Ghz P3.

For those of you looking to snag one of them newfangled Thunderbird AMD CPUs check out the HotHardware article on overclocking the chips.

Looks like even AMD goofs up once in a while. Gateway has announced a problem with the 1GHz Thunderbird systems. It hasnt been completely tracked down but it's probably not the chip but something else in the system.

Next Dimension Hardware was at the PC Expo 2000 and got to check out the AMD booth to see what they were up to such as the PowerNow technology for notebooks.

A couple of stories for you guys about upcoming CPUs from both Intel and AMD. Firstly it looks like Intel is going to release a new 1.13GHz Coppermine chip by the end of next month. Place your bets on when people will actually be able to order those things though. Also, SEXNINJA!!! sent in this link to a ZDNet story discussing AMDs plans for the 2GHz 64bit SledgeHammer CPU.

Because it is based on Sledgehammer, the new desktop chip will have the ability to -- code segment by code segment -- recognize and switch between 32-bit and 64-bit code, AMD officials said. That means Sledgehammer users will be able to run 64-bit applications on desktop PCs.

ZDNet has a pretty interesting article covering a recent conversation the president of AMD had with a group of reporters. The topic of course being how to overtake Intel for the lead in the CPU market.

Some excellent news for all the overclockers out there, it looks like the new line of AMD CPUs overclock like a champ. According to TomsHardware who gets pretty techy on us about the pins of the CPU (he read the whitesheet) but more importantly shows off some benchmarks of the CPUs getting cranked. Asus already has a motherboard capable of overclocking to boot.

I've got four Duron processors, one 650 MHz type and three Duron 700 types. After raising the voltage to some hefty 1.85 V all four Durons reached 950 MHz without a glitch!!!

AMD Zone has some roadmap info for the Duron and Thunderbird processors, such as a 1.4Ghz Thunderbird in Q1 2001.

Looks like everyone has gotten their AMD Duron articles up and going this morning. You can check out the performance of the new AMD cpu on Anandtech, AMDZone, GamersDepot, CPUReview, and TomsHardware. (Thanks Stomped for the links)

For everyone excited about the new AMD Thunderbird release (who isnt?) there is a great wrap-up on Tech-Report explaining all of the overclocking possibilities for the CPU. Looks like fun!

Hardware Central has an interview with AMD, discussing their Fab 30 plant in Dresden. They talk about the employment benefits this plant brings, such as the opper interconnect technology.

AMD today officially launched the "new" Athlon (formerly codenamed Thunderbird), and has also started shipping of their Celeron-competing Duron processor. Currently the enhanced Athon will be available at 1GHz, 950, 900, 850, 800 and 750MHz. AnandTech already has a review (for the 1Ghz and 800mhz version), and the results aren't exactly what you would call impressive. It's a nice increase over the old Athlon, but the Pentium3 at the same frequency with a i820 chipset and RDRAM is still mighty close in some benchmarks, or beats it in others. There's also a 1Ghz review on Hardware Central. And that's not all, as there's also an AMD interview on FullOn3D. Here's a Q3 benchmark from Anand / Sharky:

demo0001 640x480x16
145.6 / 115.7 - Intel P3 1Ghz (i820 + RDRAM)
143.9 / 132.3 - Thunderbird 1Ghz
133.8 / 112.7 - Old Athlon 1Ghz
132.2 - Intel P3 1Ghz

update Steve: I added the Sharky benchmarks which show the T-bird on top to give a little parity. Also AMD has announced it is now also shipping from it's German plant in Dresden. The Dresden fab is producing the new Athlon ( featuring 256 kb of on-chip L2 cache and 128 kb of L1 cache ) , with clock speeds up to 1Ghz. Unlike the ones made in Austin,TX (aluminum technology) the Dresden fab produces processors using copper interconnect technology. As I mentioned yesterday, there are some photos of the Thunderbird on Tweak Town. Here is a list of more reviews: (Thanks Blues) Sharky Extreme, Tom's Hardware Guide, CPU Review, PC World, Gamers Depot, and Ace's Hardware.

Tweak Town has some pictures of the new AMD Thunderbird CPU and motherboard which will be launching tomorrow.

What? Not DOOM 3? Well contrary to popular belief there is a little bit of other stuff happening. According to CNET the AMD Thunderbird chips will be unveiled (and showing up for sale shortly after) next week Monday. The chips will debut at 750mhz to 1GHz speeds and higher. Kyle from HardOCP is actually going to be at the show where they bring out the new chips so hopefully we'll get some first hand info.

The new architecture also will cut manufacturing costs. Free of the larger cache, Thunderbirds can be put into smaller, less expensive packages. The new processor marks AMD's first foray into copper. Many of the new Thunderbirds will be made with copper, rather than aluminum, circuitry. Because copper conducts electricity better than aluminum, the chips run cooler. This gives AMD the opportunity to make faster versions in the future.

Yummy! it looks like the AMD/Intel price wars are heating back up again. You can check out this news.com article with word on all the Intel CPU price cuts. (Thanks Gregory Powell) and also, AMDZone got a translation of this ithome.com.tw article with 2 very important points:

*. AMD and VIA to introduce Thunderbird/KT133 on June 5, 2000.
*. Athlon price cut by 20% to 30% early June (next week).

Combine this news item with the word that Via is showing off a 1.4GHz "Athlon" chip and it makes you re-think if it will be a Thunderbird or not. Although they do list it on a KX133 chipset...

Word from the Via Technologies page is that they will be showing off a 1.4GHz Athlon CPU (Not sure if it's T-bird) at the Computex 2000 show which is less than a week away.

The AMD Athlon FAQ on AMDZone has been updated, now containing 48 Q&A's.

Over at Ace's Hardware there's an update with some more details on upgrading to an AMD's Thunderbird, the new Athlon that will be out soon. It's still doubtful the processor will ever work on any VIA KX-133 mobo, even after a BIOS upgrade of such a board.