Also on the CPU front, it looks like the 700mhz P3 CPUs will be seeing the light of day a bit earlier than expected. Thanks Redwood

Looks like Intel has some pretty big plans for major releases at the end of next month. Here is a ZDNet article talking about the new 820 chipset, support for 133mhz bus, and all kinds of other wacky stuff:

The 820 chip set will debut, along with two new Pentium III processors, a 533MHz Pentium III and a 600MHz Pentium III chip, on Sept. 27, sources said. The chips, which support the 133MHz bus, will be based on the current .25 micron Pentium III design.  Intel is planning to follow those Pentium IIIs quickly with the Oct. 25 launch of six new desktop Pentium III processors, based on its Coppermine technology.
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Of the six new Coppermine-based desktop Pentium III chips, all are designed for use with the 820 chip set, and three, including a 500MHz, 550MHz and 600MHz, will be for use with a 100MHz bus, sources said. Three more, a 600MHz, a 650MHz and a 667MHz, will support either a 100MHz or 133MHz bus, sources said. Intel may release a 700MHz in place of the 667MHz, sources said, however this was unclear at press time.

While on the subject of CPUs, check out the new Review-Zone article comparing the new AMD Athlon CPU to current Intel P3's.

Interesting item of the day for you guys. It looks like the new Intel chips are running Linux just dandy but Microsft has to play catch up. According to TheRegister "Microsoft Redmond has drafted in armies of developers in an attempt to sort out the embarrassing fact, the sources said." Stuff like this is usually pretty amusing.

The big story over the weekend was those Intel CPU price cuts which are just about huge. the P3-400 and P3-450 CPUs are available for just peanuts. Well news.com talks a bit more about the prices, go grab yourself a p3-450 and crank it! (Or wait for that Athlon) The P3-600 prices dont change though.

The 550-MHz Pentium III will drop 26 percent to $487 from $658. The 500-MHz version will sink 41 percent, to $251 from $423.
Lower down the speed scale, Intel is dropping the price of the 450-MHz Pentium III and 450-MHz Pentium II to $183 from $230, a 20 percent discount.

From Ars Technica: Tomorrow Intel is slashin' PII and PIII prices as expected, but man, these cuts are deep!  The PIII 550 is dropping from that shockingly high $660 to a more modest $490.  More tantalizing, the seemingly overclockable PIII 450 will tune in at about $185.

ZDN has the latest word on what the future holds for Intel's Pentium III and Celeron line up, as well as a quick bit in AMD's market segment strategy. Looks like the Celeron finally "grows up" getting those SSE instructions, as well as hitting the 100MHz bus. (Something we've been doing for over a year already!). Thanks Dest.

With this transition, Celeron will receive a performance increase thanks to a number of features that are now reserved for high-end Pentium III processors. The list includes Streaming SIMD Extensions, a set of instructions for processing multimedia, along with support for a 100MHz system bus, sources said.

Celeron will also adopt a new packaging design, called "flip chip," pin grid array for the 370 pin Socket 370. Flip chip packaging moves the pins that attach the chip to the motherboard from its edges to its center, making for a shorter electrical path and a shorter thermal path, and increasing performance and heat dissipation, sources said.

Some guy in France sent Tech Zone the scoop in getting his P3-600 to 800MHz.

It looks like those delays on the Intel Coppermine CPU are more than initially though. Check out the story over at The Register.

The Wicked3D guys got their hands on one of those nifty Celeron 466 CPUs and put it through the paces.

Kyle over at HardOCP is all over that dual Celeron stuff. It looks like Intel is not going to disable the dual CPU functionality of the Celeron CPUs after all. They are gonna label them though to scare off all of the uh.. hrm.. The same people who make dual celeron systems are the guys who overclock right? Not sure when the last time I saw an overclocker actually pay attention to what Intel says.

The super-duper-keen ArsTechnica guys have a long hard look at the dual Celeron stuff in action and just how it works. Might wanna snag yourself one of those deals for that SMP Quake3 action.

The Review Zone has a review (wow, irony) of Intel's latest, the P3-600. Basically, you know what they say. Nothing industry altering (a la the K7) and you'd be better of grabbing a P3-550 and over clocking it. But go read the review anyway, they have benchmarks!

The guys at TechZone have actually gotten a Celeron 366 cranked up to 605mhz.

HardOCP has busted out with a pretty good look at the Intel CPU roadmap which should give you an idea on what is up in the future from Intel and when the latest CPUs will be available. Keep in mind this thing changes a lot as market conditions change and Intel makes adjustments. While you're at it check out the AnandTech P3-600 review.

VoodooExtreme has posted a "once over" of the new P3-600mhz chip.

FiringSquad has a new article taking a look at Celeron 366 CPUs in dual mode which seem to be clocking to 550mhz with ease.

With all that positive press AMD is getting for the K7, you would think Intel is scrambling to get things going and push out stuff ahead of schedule to match up right? Well things arent going so well at the Intel camp. Check out the latest word that the Intel Merced may be slipping fiurther. Thanks to the ArsTechnica gimps for this one.

The latest lag, which could put off Merced's release by a few weeks or months, won't be as significant as the delay Intel imposed last year when it shifted the 64-bit chip's debut from the end of 1999 to mid-2000.

The HardOCP guys have gotten their meathooks on a new Coppermine CPU from Intel, clocked at 700mhz even and they done run a bunch of benchmarks on the thing. But can it hang with a 700mhz Athlon?