Thanks SHoTTa35 for sending in this one.. On Monday, May 27, 2002 AMD is allegedly going to carry out a massive price reduction. As The Inquirer reports, the CPU retailers try to sell out as many processors as possible before the prices go down.
The prices usually get reduced when the new fastest models are announced. This time is also not an exception. In this and this online stores you can see Athlon XP 2200+ selling for $249 and $215 respectively. $249 seems to me to be a bit too high, because on Monday the No.1 competitor, Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz will cost $241 (see this news story). In this case we dare suppose that Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8GHz actual core clock) will drop down to around $200-$215.
Thoroughbred based processors are expected to come out on June 10, 2002. This way, the already selling Athlon XP 2200+ is nevertheless based on Palomino core, although there used to circulate some rumors about AMD's inability to develop an Athlon XP based on the old core but working at 1.8GHz.
According to the info coming from unofficial sources, AMD is going to release a server Athlon MP 2100+ in the end of June-beginning of July. It is even more interesting that the new processor will support faster system bus, and the core logic – faster memory type. The use of 166MHz FSB grants a pretty tangible performance increase by Athlon XP processors (see article called AMD Athlon XP and 166MHz FSB: Why Not?), however there are no chipsets in the market yet, which could work at this frequency officially and be certified for server usage.
News source: x-bit labs
