The first CPU we saw performance demos on in the AMD booth was the just recently shipping K6-2 400. Sporting the highest MHz speed that has ever been stamped (painted) on an AMD product, the K6-2 400 was in full force on several PCs, including a high-end Compaq OEM model.

The K6-2 400 performs like you'd expect a 400MHz part from AMD to, which means that it turned in benchmark scores approximately 10 - 15% faster than AMD's own K6-2 350. AMD also had a few K6-2 366 and 380 CPUs running on machines, but we didn't spend much time dwelling on them, we had bigger fish to fry.

The entire K6 CPU line is apparently doing extremely well in the marketplace for AMD, with their own literature pointing to a dominant 43.8% market share in PCs that cost over $1,000, and a 54.3% share of the total pie in PCs that cost under $1,000. Intel's numbers in the same AMD provided stats showed a 44.2% and 28.8% share of the two market types, for both their P2 and Celeron lines.

AMD wouldn't comment to this effect, but we expect a K6-2 433 or 450 to debut sometime in early 99, and another higher speed model sometime after that. After that, the K6-3 will become the focus as the transisition part until the K7 gets its act together.