If you are salivating on the prospect of putting this kind of power in your desktop PC, be prepared to wait a while longer. AMD anticipates that their present high speed Athlon and value Duron line-up will satisfy current demand quite nicely. The areas where AMD has yet to gain a foothold, such as notebooks and servers, will be the first ones addressed by the new AMD Palomino and Morgan cores, while desktop versions aren't planned until the second half of 2001.

Although this is later than many would have hoped, the promise of copper interconnects on a Duron (currently all Durons use aluminum interconnects) should make for some interesting overclocking experiments, especially if the Duron line continues to be clocked much lower than a comparable Athlon. Early in 2002 we should see the real deal, as AMD unveils the 0.13 micron Thoroughbred (Athlon) and Appaloosa (Duron) cores and some noticeable jumps in core speed.

AMD's announcement of the new Mobile Athlon 4 and Duron processors is more of a challenge to Intel's portable computing dominance than a ground-breaking change to their basic core design. Both CPUs are slight enhancements of the current technology, although this does mark a quantum leap forward from AMD's best-selling mobile processor, the K6-2. Once the desktop versions start appearing later this year, you can bet we'll be putting them to the test and seeing if data pre-fetch and enhanced 3D Now! Professional live up to their performance claims and if copper interconnects can make the Duron even more of an overclocking champ. See you then!