AMD Athlon 700

The Basics

For a description of how the Athlon works and all of the technology that goes into the Athlon, take a look at our AMD Athlon review.

The 700MHz part hasn't changed from the other four clock speeds currently available. The CPU operates at a 1.6v core voltage, makes use of a 7.0x-clock multiplier, and a 100MHz FSB that transfers on both the rising and falling edges of the clock (this produces the equivalent of the 200MHz FSB that the EV6 protocol ambiguously specifies).

The Athlon 700 naturally draws more current than the previous speeds and some early boards may have difficulties supplying the processor with the right amount of current. But, rest assured that once the CPU begins shipping in quantities to the public there will be motherboards that are more than capable of driving it. November will be a good month for Athlon motherboards…

Other than that, the CPU is completely unchanged from the Athlon that debuted just under 2 months ago. Below you'll find a quick specifications chart to compare the Athlon to previous and upcoming CPUs:

There are some very interesting things to look forward to by the end of this year.  There is no doubt about it that the Athlon has definitely won this battle between AMD and Intel.  The Pentium III is simply no match for the Athlon in terms of performance.  But what do we have to look forward to from Intel?

The Coppermine should have some very unique offers to make that will give the Athlon some healthy competition.  The transistor count of the Coppermine is one thing that you shouldn't get too excited about.   Like the Celeron with its 128KB L2, the Coppermine has to account for a full 256KB of L2 cache on its die, thus contributing to that ~27 million transistor count. 

From AMD's side of the game, the Athlon is just getting started.  The transition to a 0.18-micron fabrication process should pave the way for the 1GHz+ Athlon CPUs and if they make the transition to 0.18-micron as smoothly as they've been boasting they can then the Athlon can become an even more powerful force into the year 2000. 

But for now, we're "stuck" at the 700MHz frequency of AMD's latest release.  So let's get on to the test...