PEOPLE AT CEBIT reckoned that the AMD 3200+ using the Barton core could launch as early as April. But that"s in contradistinction to the latest roadmaps we"ve seen which have it down for the middle of the year. So either something"s gone better than AMD hoped, or possibly Intel"s 3.20GHz Pentium 4 is galvanising the roadmaps.
The 3200+ is reckoned to have 512K of level two cache may well work with a 400MHz front side bus, the last stop on the Alpha EV6 station. What will the performance be like? FSB 400 Athlons will be able to compete with a Pentium 4 3.06, but how it will perform against a Prescott at 3.2GHz with 1MB cache is a different matter.
However, the roadmaps we"ve seen show Northwood has another gasp at 3.20GHz before that particular process expires, breathing heavily. An Nforce 2 chipset of an AMD "special partner" demonstrated that its chipset can actually run at 400 MHZ FSB speed while there will be chipsets from SIS and VIA to support this feature as well.