The Real AMD K7

First contact

Back in May, FiringSquad brought you the first exclusive look at an early build of the AMD K7 550. As expected from an engineering sample, we saw some major problems with the initial setup, both from a performance and engineering standpoint. We also had a limited time to work with the setup, and had little to no control over installed patches and drivers.

With all the cards stacked, the preview was at best a representative look at what the could be - high scores were indicative of improved performance over the current series of processors, but any number of issues could have contributed to results that were below average or expectations.

Let's take another look

In January, FS had a world exclusive review on Intel's Pentium III processor, destined to be the new CPU king. Now, things are considerably different. Although it's only been 2 months since our first "K7"preview, many things have changed. The K7 has turned over at least one new revision, this one supposedly "feature complete," and has more noticeably adopted a new name, Athlon.

While AMD has long been known to undersupply newly announced processors, they claim to be on track and on schedule for a late-July release of the Athlon. As the gears of the Athlon Internet publicity machine begin to turn, FiringSquad once again returns to the microprocessor front to bring you the real story, first. How far has AMD come? And more importantly, will they be able to nab Intel's speed crown for both integer and floating point performance?

The Athlon is scheduled to be introduced and announced in mid-late July of 1999, in speeds of 500, 550, and 600MHz. Assuming AMD has the manufacturing capability to keep up with demand, you can expect to find it appearing in systems as early as August.

FiringSquad now brings you the world's first hands-on Athlon 600MHz preview.