AMD Athlon™ Processor Wins Prestigious PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award At Comdex

AMD Athlon processor also selected for Computer Reseller News' Ultimate PC

LAS VEGAS, NV -- 11/16/1999 -- The AMD Athlon™ processor earned a key PC Magazine award Monday night at the magazine's 16th Annual Awards for Technical Excellence. The award - Best Component in the Hardware Category - adds to the growing list of accolades for the AMD Athlon processor.

"We are obviously proud of the incredible effort our engineers accomplished in designing the Athlon," said Rob Herb, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Executive for AMD. "When a publication as reputable as PC Magazine validates the AMD Athlon's superior capabilities, it speaks volumes about the processor and its ability to enable reliable, stable and performance-driven PCs, workstations and servers."

In addition to the PC Magazine 1999 Technical Excellence Award, the AMD Athlon processor was chosen by Computer Reseller News' Test Center as the processor for its Ultimate PC. CRN Test Center officials are building the Ultimate PC before a live audience at noon during each day of Comdex, the world's largest computer tradeshow.

Other awards given to the AMD Athlon processor, or machines based on the processor, include:

  • Best Product of 1999, Windows NT Systems (January 2000)
  • Ultimate Game Machine (co-winner), Falcon Northwest Computers, Computer Gaming World (December 1999)
  • State-of-the-Art Desktop PC: Compaq Presario 5861, PC Computing (November 1999)
  • Cadalyst Labs 5-Star (out of a possible 5 stars) Highly Recommended Workstation: XI Computer 650K MTower SP with an AMD Athlon 650 MHz processor, Cadalyst (November 1999)
  • Editors' Choice (Desktop PCs): TCE K7-600 PC, CRN Test Center, (September 1999)
  • Best Exhibited Product, World PC Expo - Japan, Nikkei Business Publications (September 1999)

In addition to the above AMD Athlon awards, AMD was recognized by CRN's readers as having the "Most Comprehensive White Box Program." The award was presented to AMD at CRN's Breakaway Exchange in Orlando, Florida in August 1999.

About the AMD Athlon processor
The AMD Athlon processor is an x86-compatible, seventh-generation design featuring a superpipelined, nine-issue superscalar microarchitecture optimized for high clock frequency; the industry's first fully pipelined, superscalar floating point unit for x86 platforms; high-performance cache technology, including 128 KB of on-chip level-one(L1) cache and a programmable, high-performance backside L2 cache interface; enhanced 3DNow!™technology with 24 new instructions designed to improve integer math calculations, data movement for Internet streaming, and DSP communications; and the AMD Athlon system bus ­ a 200MHz system interface based on the Alpha™EV6 bus protocol with support for scalable multiprocessing. The AMD Athlon processors are manufactured on AMD's 0.25-micron process technology in FAB 25 in Austin, Texas.

The AMD Athlon processor's seventh-generation microarchitecture, superscalar floating point engine, and high-bandwidth, 200MHz system bus enable it to achieve performance levels never before attained in an x86 processor. The AMD Athlon processor significantly outperforms previous-generation processors, such as Intel's Pentium III product family, and delivers the highest floating point, integer, and 3D multimedia performance for x86 system platforms.

Pricing
The 700MHz AMD Athlon processor is priced at $849 each in 1,000 unit quantities.