At the time of launch, the availability of the Athlon will be limited, as most production will be channeled towards the major OEM’s. This will probably be the case whilst the Athlon is produced using the 0.25 micron manufacturing process at AMD’s Austin, Texas plant. Only when AMD’s new mega-fab in Dresden in Germany comes on line, using the 0.18 micron manufacturing process will the Athlon be available in large numbers.

User’s though should realise that AMD is not going to price the Athlon in the consumer friendly way that they have done with the entire K6 family. The Athlon is a premium product, and will be sold at a premium price comparable to Intel’s Pentium III line. The Athlon though will be made available in a range of versions designed to suit different market needs. These are:

Athlon Ultra.

With a name very similar to the cream of current TnT2 graphics cards, there will be the Athlon Ultra. This version will be produced for the server and workstation market, and could well utilise faster level 2 cache RAM compared to other Athlons. Expect to pay Xeon prices for this chip.

Athlon Professional.

This will be the bread and butter of the Athlon range designed for mid to high end PC’s. This chip will go head to head in the volume PC segment with Intel’s Pentium III. This version will utilise ½ speed level 2 cache and will be priced competitively with the Pentium III.

This chip was branded as Athlon upon it's release in June 2000.

Athlon Select.

For this member of the Athlon family, think Celeron. The details of this processor are not yet known, but it will be the budget sucessor to the K6 family. Expect to see this only when the Dresden plant is in full swing, and after AMD has finished with the K6 III, which it still has plans for.

This is now know as the Duron.

Motherboards.

Athlon 500.