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AMD Marketing Gears Turn


The new Athlon XP processors based on the Palomino core won't be named after their rated megahertz. AMD marketing has decided to give each processor designations to suggest equivalent performance to a Pentium 4 processor of the designated clock speed. Here is the list of the designations and OEM costs of the new processors:


Athlon XP 1500+ (1.33 ghz) $115
Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4 ghz) $124
Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 ghz) $152
Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53 ghz) $210
System builders have been told not to mention the actual clock speeds of the chips. Apparently, they are to explain the difference between the clock speed and designation with the marketing term quantispeed technology, which supposedly boosts the Athlon XP performance to that of a Pentium 4 with 300 mhz higher clock speed.

The new processors will ship in the second week of October.