The first reviews of AMD's latest Athlon XP CPU are in. The XP 2200+ uses a new core (0.13 micron, first used in mobile XPs), and runs at 1.8Ghz. Despite the core change though, the new CPU offers just a minor clock speed bump. It comes close to the P4 2.4Ghz though. You can read about the chip yourself on AnandTech, HardOCP, Ace's Hardware and Tech Report. For those who care, here is the official PR.

Seems kinda wacky, but you never really know. Here's some benchmarks of that next-gen Clawhammer chip running at a conservative 800mhz. Thing is it manages to beat out a P4 running at 1.6ghz. Hmmm. Thanks HardOCP

According to CNET, AMD will release the Athlon XP 2200+ on Monday. The XP 2200+ will run at 1.8Ghz. There's no word on pricing.

Following a similar move by Intel a few days ago (story), AMD has now also slashed CPU prices. The XP2100 has been cut from $330 to $224, the XP2000 from $280 to $193 and the XP1900 from $220 to $172. Mobile CPU prices were changed as well.

The Inquirer is reporting that AMD is phasing out the budget Duron CPUs. They will be replaced by lower speed grade Athlon XP chips, which are already cheap anyway. The Durons should be gone by the end of the year.

AMD is launching the mobile Athlon XP CPUs today. Until now, the mobile Athlon was the Athlon 4 but that name has now been dropped. The mobile XP starts at 1400+ and 1500+ speeds, the 1600+ and 1700+ will follow later this quarter.

The Inquirer is reporting that the latest AMD CPU core will be introduced soon, March 20. The new Athlon XP CPU will use the Thoroughbred core, which is based on a 0.13 micron process and has the VCore changed to 1.65. On March 13 AMD will release the XP 2100+, which is still based on the current Palomino core. Update: Ok, now they're saying we won't see the new core on March 20.

AnandTech has written up a report about AMD's Hammer CPU, which is being shown at the Intel Developer Forum. The Hammer is AMD's upcoming 64-bit processor, and it seems to be pretty impressive.

VIA today officially launched their newest Apollo chipset, the KT333. This one will bring "lightning fast" DDR 333 support to the Athlon XP platform. As always, several sites have already tested the new chipset. You can find articles at HardOCP, Tech-Report, Xbit Labs, AnandTech and VIA Hardware. So is it a lot faster than our current KT266-A motherboards? Sure isn't, so upgrading at this point is not needed even if you're the FPS devil.

With 25% more memory bandwidth, the VIA Apollo KT333 offers the ultimate in high performance computing, excelling in the most demanding applications, and fully exploiting the unmatched performance of powerful AMD Athlon XP processors with QuantiSpeed Architecture.

The VIA Apollo KT333 also boasts the latest South Bridge technology with first to market innovations like Ultra ATA-133 in the VT8233A. Ultra ATA-133, offering 33% more bandwidth between hard drive and chipset, delivers the performance headroom needed for today’s and tomorrow’s data intensive applications, including video and gaming. The enhanced IDE controller supports all Ultra-DMA 33/66/100/133 devices including HDDs, CD-ROMS and DVD-ROMs as well as new generation BigDrive HDDs that break the previous 137GB limit on hard drive capacity and enable an exponential increase in data storage capacity for personal computing devices. [ read more ]

According to this story on CNET, AMD expects to return to profibility in the second quarter. Though last year saw the company back in the red after a few good quarters, they are pretty confident things are looking better for the tech sector.

ATI today announced they will be releasing the ATI Radeon 8500LE videocard. Based on the 8500 chipset, the Radeon LE will lack some of the features of the regular 8500 but will feature 128mb of DDR memory and will cost $199 when its released in April. The original Radeon 8500 will also get 128mb of DDR ram and will maintain its $299 price tag.

The guys at AMD are having one of those good kind of problems, they cant seem to make enough chips for the demand they have in the market. They are considering making some partners to help get those chips out faster.

CNET is reporting that AMD is introducing a new laptop CPU, the Athlon 4 1.3Ghz. Notebooks from Compaq using this CPU are shipping today.

AMD today announced the introduction of their 1.3Ghz Duron CPU. It's priced at $118 in 1000-unit quantities, so you will probably find it online for under a 100 dollars. Two reviews are already available, scroll down to the hardware reviews.

There is an AMD roadmap overview on The Inquirer showing what we can expect Desktop processor-wise this year. Thoroughbred and Appaloosa will find their way to consumers in the second and third quarter of this year.

Not sure how legit these are, but here's some AMD Clawhammer benchmarks showing off performance of the next-gen AMD CPU. Thanks HardOCP

The Inquirer has a few details on upcoming Athlon XP CPUs based on "reliable sources". We'll be seeing a XP 2200+ this quarter, running at 1800Mhz which still uses .18 micron technology. Then, in Q2, AMD will finally release the new XP using .13 micron technology, the XP 2500+. According to The Inquirer it seems likely the on die cache might be higher than the 256k currently on the XP CPUs and so along with additional gates and a better design it should be quite a bit faster.

AMD didn't have a great last quarter in 2001, but they beat analyst estimates. AMD had quarterly sales of $951.9 million and lost $15.8 million which is about 5 cents a share, while analysts had predicted an 18 cents a share loss. AMD also expects a Q1 2002 loss.

ZDNet is reporting that AMD is doing the happy dance, with increased market share in pretty much all areas. AMD is now in 27% of U.S. PCs, 54% of Japanese PCs and 49% of European PCs, with those being PCs in the consumer market.

AMD today released the 1.2Ghz Duron, matching the speed of Intel's 1.2Ghz Celeron which was released a while ago. Don't really see how much this is gonna save since a regular 1.2Ghz Athlon is dirt cheap already.