Good Old Tom heeft zijn artikel over de 1GHz Athlon en Pentium III eindelijk af gekregen. Net als eerdere reviews komt Tom tot de conclusie dat de Athlon 1000MHz (in tegenstelling tot de Pentium III) vanwege de L2 cache divider van 1/3 niet echt geweldig scaled. Wel is het zo 1GHz Pentium III systeem nog zo goed als onleverbaar zijn, zeker aan deze kant van de oceaan. AMD is aan de andere kant al vrolijk bezig met het bakken van haar Giga-Athlon .
AMD has no reason to feel bad though. It's not only nice to see that Giga-Athlon performs best in the majority of the SPECviewperf and FPU benchmarks. In the rest of the tests Giga-Athlon is certainly not exactly far behind Giga-Pentium III as well. Keep this in mind when you realize that Intel can hardly ship any gigahertz Pentium III processors. While Intel has not even got enough processors in the area between 800 and 1000 MHz to release Pentium III 866 and 933, and Europe is bar of any 1 GHz PIII sample altogether, AMD is equipping the press as well as its OEMs with gigahertz Athlons. If you really think that you need a Giga-System, the decision will be very easy. Athlon Gigas are actually available, Pentium III Gigas are a simple phantom. You cannot buy what isn't there, can you? Let's see if Intel has successfully impacted AMD's business by releasing the Pentium III at 1 GHz prematurely. Intel's plan might have been to damage AMD's sales by releasing a phantom product at a very low price. If this phantom product doesn't soon become reality however, Intel's plan might backfire. I wonder if Craig Barret (or was it Kyle after all?) will succeed with this boasting policy.