That happened a few weeks ago. Yes, with its 5% processor clock increase over the previous Athlon 1.33 GHz it was just as meaningless as Pentium 4 1.8 GHz and we actually posted an (also delayed) article . AMD is just as capable of pure marketing releases and we are obediently (and besides, not quite selflessly) posting articles about it.

AMD Releases AMD760MP

Ugh! Was that an actually meaningful product? Yes? It showed that AMD is able to construct SMP-stuff! Me-Too or what? Who is going to buy the currently super-expensive platforms with their sweet little bugs? You? Really? You are one of them!

I am sorry, but this release was more of a feast for AMD-enthusiasts. Am I one? Please! Enthusiasm? Me? About Computers? Not really. Not anymore. I would love to see the numbers of AthlonMP processors that actually sell in AMD760MP systems right now. The masses won't pay for it, the masses don't need it ... however, the masses like to read about it. Fair enough! We'll continue writing about it then. At least AMD760MP is a contributor to independence. You can buy Athlon-powered SMP-systems now ... if you really have to.

Tualatin - Will Rescue Pentium III's Survival?

Ha! What a question! From our recent article it seems clear that Tualatin has quite a potential. That's good, or is it not? Well, it's not really. At least not for Intel. Pentium III is the 'old' Intel processor. It's not kewl, it's not orange and it doesn't suck light bulbs. It also doesn't sell with RDRAM. That's why Mike Magee recons that Tualatin will never really be released in quantities . It would only make Pentium 4's life harder. It's another freedom issue. You may want it, but most likely you ain't getting it.

NVIDIA Announces nForce Chipset

You'll hear a lot about that one here at Tom's Hardware very soon. Do I like it? Yes, you know I do. However, I would have liked an nForce-version for Pentium 4 as well. With its dual-channel DDR-SDRAM architecture it could have kicked RDRAM's butt right to Pluto. I guess that's why Intel's management doesn't like it and so NVIDIA wasn't blessed with a P4-front side bus license. Many of my colleague hardware reviewers would have had to eat humble pie too. A Pentium 4 with nForce would have proven that Intel's blue and orange flagship processor does NOT perform best with RDRAM. Now we might never know. I think that is very sad. Another independence lost.