·CPU Guide
·The Real Athlon XP Speeds
·AMD Athlon Classic (K7)
·AMD Athlon Thunderbird (K7 Ultra)
·AMD Athlon MP (Multi-Processor K7 Mustang)
·AMD Athlon XP (K7 Palomino)
·AMD Duron (K7 Morgan formerly Camaro)
·AMD Duron (K7 Select)
·Cooling Ideas
·AMD Processor Roadmap
·AMD Processor Pricing.
·Intel Processor Roadmap
·Intel Processors
·Intel® Celeron® Processor
·Intel® Pentium® III Processors
·Wrong CPU Speed Reported in Windows XP - Notebooks
·What are current AMD Core Codes?
·How do you decipher the AMD Processor Codes?
·2005/2006 CPU Chart

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by Cariad edited by vkr

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by Cariad edited by dbmaven
last modified: 2003-12-18 20:39:36

AMD - Athlon (K7 / Athlon Professional)

Athlon in standard plastic shell - Slot A

AMD's Athlon uses a Slot A architecture that is physically compatible with Intel's Slot 1, but electrically compatible with the DEC's EV-6 Alpha bus, instead of Intel's closed P6 bus architecture. The EV-6 bus has the potential to run at up to 400MHz, starting at 200MHz initially (100MHz * 2).

The Athlon features 19 new 3D instructions with a 128-bit pipeline, backwards compatible with the 3DNow! instructions, but faster, to give Intel's SSE a run for the money.

The K7 will feature chipsets that support SMP or Symmetric Multi-Processing, but not until mid-2001. The K7 will be the first non-Intel x86 chip to be used in systems with more than one processor in a system. Dual processing systems will be first, and then 4 and 8 processor systems as well. This will be significant in the workstation and server market. The K6 architecture is capable of multiprocessing as well, but we will never see a SMP chipset available for it.

All standard Athlons ship with 512K of off-chip L2 cache running at either 1/2, 2/5 or 1/3 processor speed.

The Athlon was initially manufactured on a .25 micron process (C Athlons), but then were moved quickly to a .18 micron process (A Athlons). A and C Athlons can be told apart by looking for an A or C to the right of the part number listed on the plastic shell surrounding them. All Athlons at 750MHz and above are manufactured on a .18 micron process. There were some .25 micron 750MHz Athlons manufactured, but they never made it to market.

The Athlon features 3 integer, 3 floating point and 3 address calculation pipelines. The integer pipelines are 10-stage and the floating point pipelines are 15-stage.

As for benchmarks, so far the K7 600 with 1/2 speed L2 cache is clocking in at around 28 Specint95 and 24 Specfp95. Check Spec.org for other scores. You may also want to check out the Duron, and Thunderbird tables for additional insight into AMD's Athlon line of processors.

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by vkr

AMD - Athlon - Thunderbird (Athlon with Performance Enhancing Cache) - Athlon-C

The Thunderbird core Athlon is available in the Socket A form factor with 256K of on-die L2 cache. The L2 cache on the TBird is 16-set associative and uses a 64-bit bus, as compared to the Pentium III's (Coppermine) 256-bit cache bus. The Thunderbird is capable of running in multiprocessor configurations and may eventually uses a 200 or 266MHz system bus, which actually runs at 100MHz*2 or 133MHz*2 for the Athlon-C. The bus speed may eventually be pushed up to 166MHz*2 for use with PC2600 DDR memory.

The Thunderbird kept the standard Athlon name, and debuted on June 5, 2000. It shipped first in speed grades from 650MHz to 1GHz, in increments of 50MHz, much like the original Athlon. The AMD website and news announcements only listed 750-1000MHz speeds, but 650 and 700MHz speeds were available as well.

Also, check out the standard, or "classic" Athlon. After 1.5GHz, AMD will shift to the Palomino Athlon core from the Thunderbird core.

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by vkr

AMD - Athlon MP (Multi-Processor -- Mustang)

AMD's Mustang processor was supposed to have support for up to 4MB of L2 cache on the chip die with tweaks to the Athlon Thunderbird core to allow for the addition of more L2 cache on chip, possibly with more pipeline stages, enabling higher clock speeds.

The core was updated, but without the additional pipeline stages and L2 cache. The "Mustang" core, now called Palomino in most references is used in reworked Athlon and Duron chips which support improved memory operations and Intel's SSE (SSE-1, not SSE-2) instructions. The extra cache will have to wait for the Hammer series of chips. This original Mustang chip has now become the Athlon MP which arrived at 1.0 and 1.2 GHz speeds and works in dual-processor configurations.

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by vkr

AMD - Athlon XP - Palomino desktop

The Palomino uses what was once going to be called the Mustang core. It features the same bus speed as the Thunderbird Athlon (266 MHz) and the same amount of L2 cache (256K). What has been added is support for Intel's SSE instructions (but not SSE-2), data pre-fetch to speed up memory transfers, and lower power consumption achieved by optimizing the chip structure.

The Athlon XP, named similarly to Microsoft's Windows XP which also launched in October 2001, features performance ratings that compare to the previous Athlon "Thunderbird" processor.

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by vkr
last modified: 2002-03-15 18:00:25

AMD - Duron - Morgan (formerly Camaro)

The Mustang-Duron core is code-named "Morgan," and runs at slower clock speeds than the Palomino (Athlon). It feature 64K of L2 cache, just like the original Duron, but features an improved core. The new Duron has support for Intel's SSE instructions and data pre-fetch for faster memory operations. To achieve that functionality there's an extra 180,000 transistors used in the Morgan Duron.

feedback form

feedback form

Any feedback you provide (corrections, updates or suggestions) are sent to the owner of this FAQ
and anyone else involved in writing or editing this item.

by vkr

AMD - Duron - Athlon Select - Spitfire

AMD's Duron (originally code-named Athlon Select, then Spitfire) is the low end of AMD's Athlon line fitting into a 462-pin Socket A interface. It features 64K of L2 cache on chip, in addition to 128K of L1 cache on the standard Athlon die. The L1 and L2 caches are unified, so they will never contain the same information. In some sense, it's almost like the Duron has 192K of L1 cache. See also the table for Athlon Thunderbird.

For Durons running at over 950 MHz, check the Duron - Morgan table. AMD changed the Duron core with a new one starting with the 1 GHz model.