The award rounds out a "triple crown" of computing magazine accolades awarded in the last calendar year. The AMD Athlon™ processor won the prestigious PC World Product of the Year award in June, and took home the PC Magazine Technical Excellence prize for Best Component in Hardware Category last November at Comdex. The three publications have a combined circulation approaching 3 million readers.

Maximum PC announces its awards annually in the December issue and posts the winners' names online. "In the CPU category, competition is small in number, but high in intensity," said Maximum PC Editor-in-Chief Jon Phillips. "It was difficult to choose. But in the end, the AMD Athlon™ processor got the nod because of its frequency headroom. AMD is essentially being recognized for launching a deep-pipelined core earlier than Intel.

Where the [AMD] Athlon™ continued to scale, the Pentium® III hit a clock ceiling, and this became especially apparent and pertinent in the last months of 2000."

"AMD is honored to have been presented with this Maximum PC award for the second year in a row," said David Somo, vice president of marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group. "The AMD Athlon™ processor has a proven track record of industry acclaim and market acceptance. This award is an extraordinary testament to the processor and to the engineering design team."

To select this year's winners, Maximum PC technology editors judged the nominees on several criteria, including benchmark performance, originality and vision of design. The AMD Athlon™ processor beat out competitors that included the Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" processor and the Transmeta Crusoe processor.

In the December 2000 issue, the editors write, "The year 2000 belonged to AMD--it beat Intel to the 1GHz mark, then rubbed dirt in Intel's face by producing faster processors in such high volume, people could actually find and buy them. But topper is the [AMD] Athlon™ with "performance enhancing cache..." With full-speed cache and a core architecture that can scale to ever-faster frequencies, it's clear why the [AMD] Athlon™ is our CPU of the Year."

Since the AMD Athlon™ processor first earned the magazine's award for CPU of the Year in December 1999, AMD has increased the processor's frequency to an astounding 1.2GHz, integrated 256KB of Level 2 cache to the processor, and stepped up its front side bus speed to 266MHz to support the highest-grade of the next-generation Double Data Rate SDRAM memory. In June, AMD also began shipping copper-based AMD Athlon™ processors from Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany.

The AMD Athlon™ processor also received a nod this week when micronpc.com's Millennia® MAX XP system won a PC Magazine Editor's Choice award. The desktop system features a 1.2GHz AMD Athlon™ processor and the AMD-760™ chipset supporting DDR SDRAM memory.

AMD Athlon™ Processor Awards Around the World
The AMD Athlon processor and AMD Athlon™ processor-based systems have received more than 65 awards worldwide. The following is a listing of the AMD Athlon processor and AMD Athlon™ processor-based system awards:

AMD Athlon™ Processor Awards

United States

• CPU of the Year, Maximum PC, December 2000
• World Class Award -- Product of the Year, PC World, July 2000.
• Analyst's Choice Award -- Best PC Processor, Microprocessor Report, January 2000
• Technical Excellence -- Best Component (Hardware Category), PC Magazine, November 1999
• Wired for 3D Editors' Choice, 3D Magazine, January 2000
• Best Product of 1999 (Hardware), Windows NT Systems, January 2000
• All-Star Award, Cadalyst, December 1999
• CPU of the Year, Maximum PC, December 1999
• Attaboy Award -- Product of the Year, Houston Chronicle, December 1999
• Peak Performer Award -- Best Product (Hardware), System Builder Summit, Palm Desert, California, March 2000.

International

• Best New Computer Hardware, The Toronto Star, May 2000.
• Best New Product, Breakaway Canada -- Computing Technology Association of Canada, April 12, 2000.
• Best Processor of 1999 (Hardware for Games Category), Game.exe, (Russia), March 2000.
• Technical Excellence -- Best Component (Hardware Category), PC Magazine en Espanol (Mexico), December 1999
• Best Overall Product of the Year, PC Magazine (UK), December 1999
• Best System Design -- Processor, PC Magazine (UK), December 1999
• Product of the Year, PC Expert (France), January 2000
• Technical Excellence -- Hardware and Component Category, PC Expert (France), January 2000
• Year 2000 Star Product (New Technology Category), Info PC (France), January 2000
• Overall Product of the Year, Info PC (France), January 2000
• Editors' Choice, Generation PC (France), January 2000
• Product of the Year, PC Compatibles (France), December 1999
• Product of the Year -- Processor, PC Direct (France), January 2000
• Product of the Year 2000, PC Achat (France), January 2000
• Product of the Year, PC World (Denmark), December 1999
• Product of the Year, PC World (Norway), December 1999
• Best CPU for Desktops, PC World Komputer (Poland), December 1999
• Technology Product of the Year, PC Kurier (Poland), January 2000
• Millennium Award, Personal Computer Magazine (The Netherlands), January 2000
• Golden Knight Award -- Best Processor of the Year, Home Computer (Russia), December 1999
• Best of Comdex (Israel), December 1999
• Best of World PC Expo 99, Nikkei BYTE/Nikkei WinPC Magazine (Japan), September 1999
• Hardware of the Year Award -- Processors, PC Joker Magazine (Germany)
• Readers Choice Award, CHIP Magazine, (Poland)
• Product of the Year Award, MikroPC (Finland), December 1999
• Product of the Year Award -- Processors, Tietokone (Finland), December 1999
• Best Product of 1999, China Computerworld (China), January 2000
• Top 10 IT Product in 1999, China Computer Reseller Weekly (China), January 2000
• Highly Recommended Hardware, eNet, January 2000
• Upgrade Product of 1999, Australian Personal Computer (Australia), November 1999
• CeBIT-Oscar for "Trend Setting Technology" -- Hardware Category, CHIP Magazin (Germany), February 2000.
• Most Innovative Manufacturer, PC Direct (Germany), February 2000.
• Reader's Choice -- Most Innovative Hardware, PC Shopping (Germany), February 2000.
• Reader's Choice - Company of the Year (Germany), PC Shopping, February 2000.
• Grand Prix Award, Best CPU -- Hi-End Use, VIDI Magazine (Croatia), February 2000.
• Grand Prix Award, Best CPU -- Games, VIDI Magazine (Croatia), February 2000.
• Grand Prix Award, Best CPU -- Office Use, VIDI Magazine (Croatia), February 2000.
• Innovation of the Year, PC Professionell (Germany), February 2000.
• Zloty Processor, Teleinfo (Poland).
• Golden Computer, Computer Bild.
• Product of the Year, PC Magazine (Italy), 2000.
• Product of the Year, CHIP Magazine (Poland), 1999.
• Recommended Product, PC Actual (Spain).

AMD Athlon™ Processor-based System Awards

• Editors' Choice Award: micronpc.com Millenia MAX XP, PC Magazine, November 2000
• #1 Home PC: Gateway Select 800, PC World, May 2000
• Fastest PC Ever Tested, Maximum PC, December 2000
• #1 PC Desktop Over $1,000: Polywell Poly K7-800, BusinessWeek Computer Buying Guide, March 2000
• #1 PC Desktop Under $1,000: Polywell Poly AG-500, BusinessWeek Computer Buying Guide, March 2000
• State-of-the-Art Desktop PC: Compaq Presario 5861, PC Computing, November 1999
• Editors' Choice Award (Desktop PCs): TCE K7-600, Computer Reseller News, September 1999
• #1 Midrange PC: Micro Express's MicroFlex-550B, PC World, January 2000
• Best PC of 2000 Award, PC User, November 2000 (Australia)
• Best Hardware of 1999: Polywell Poly 800K7-700, CNET.com, December 1999
• System of the Year: CyberMax Enthusiast AP6 650 MHz Athlon, Maximum PC, December 1999
• Attaboy Award -- Best Consumer PC: Compaq Presario 5900Z, Houston Chronicle, December 1999
• Cadalyst Labs 5-Star (out of a possible 5 stars) Highly Recommended Workstation: Polywell 800K7-6501, Cadalyst
• Cadalyst Labs 5-Star Highly Recommended Workstation: Sys Performance 600A, Cadalyst
• Cadalyst Labs 5-Star Highly Recommended Workstation: Xi Computer 650K MTower SP, Cadalyst
• Ultimate Game Machine (co-winner): Falcon Northwest Computers, Computer Gaming World, December 1999.