From AMDzone:
Thanks to Adam who went to a presentation in Seattle for this info:
MSI, FIC, Biostar, Gigabyte, ASUS, and one more
I can't remember) were on schedule to have boards out by mid-September. She
also said six more manufacturers had been "enabled" to release boards by
the end of the year. One thing I thought was interesting was that she said
that the AMD "Fester" boards are made on a six-layer PCB, which is the
reference spec. However, ASUS told AMD that they have designed a cheaper,
more stable board which only uses a four-layer PCB... interesting.
Also of note were the following:
- The Athlon which has just been launched is NOT multiprocessor compatible.
The multiprocessor compatible Athlons will be available in early 2000.
- According to the woman at the AMD seminar, the ASUS Athlon motherboard
will use an AMI (!?) BIOS (not Award, like they usually do), the AMD
"Irongate" Northbridge and the VIA Southbridge.
- Although the Athlon uses 100MHz memory with it's 200MHz bus, AMD is
reccommending certain "name brand" memory modules for use with the Athlon.
These are supposedly on their web site by now. (I haven't checked yet.)
- AGP 4x is NOT supported in the AMD Athlon chipset. However, the new VIA
chipset coming out either late this year or early next year will have
support for 133MHz memory AND AGP 4x.
- In un-Athlon related news, the AMD rep said that AMD was definately
bringing out a K6-2 500 and that it would be officially announced next
monday. She also said that the initial price would be around $110. I'm
assuming that's in large quantities, but still... |
