AMD Athlon 4 - The Palomino is Here

Hammer and Final Words

As you can also tell by their updated roadmap, AMD has pushed their x86-64 processors, SledgeHammer and ClawHammer back until the second half of 2002. Very little is known about these two but they are aimed at the same markets as Intel's forthcoming Itanium processor.

Now that the Athlon 4 is here, the big question everyone is asking is "will it work with current Socket-A motherboards?" AMD actually told us that as long as motherboard manufacturers adhere to the guidelines they set forth, a motherboard purchased today would work with not only the Athlon 4 but also the Thoroughbred and Barton cores. This means that the Thoroughbred and Barton cores will both be on Socket-A Athlons as well.

Don't get too excited though. Unfortunately not all motherboard manufacturers to adhere to AMD's guidelines properly. Voltage and BIOS support is necessary for your motherboard to work with the Athlon 4 as well as the upcoming Thoroughbred and Barton cores. And even if your current motherboard does work with the future cores, you may not want to even use it since newer motherboards will have more features, newer chipsets, greater performance etc… But it is nice to know that AMD is sticking with Socket-A for the Athlon family.

Now that the mobile Athlon 4 is here, it is time to start the countdown for the workstation version. Although the workstation Athlon 4 will be faster clock for clock than a desktop Thunderbird based Athlon, you will be able to get a much higher clocked Athlon (Thunderbird) than you will a workstation Athlon 4 which will end up outperforming the new core. The forthcoming desktop version of the Athlon 4 will combine its features and a higher clock speed making that ideal for your single processor systems.

But that desktop launch is still at least four months away. In the mean time, AMD has one more ace up their sleeve…or should I say two more.