Plug and Play support
Future features such as AGP 4X and PC-133 SDRAM support will have to wait until VIA, Acer, and SiS implement their own versions of the AMD-750 chipset, which will happen sometime over the next three to five months.
Hopefully the recent earthquakes that have rocked Taiwan, causing wide spread equipment damage and power outages, have not seriously delayed the introduction of the AGP4X/PC-133 Athlon core logic sets.
We strongly feel that the next-generation Athlon mainboard chipsets are the final piece of the puzzle as it pertains to overall system performance potential. Right now, as good as it is, the AGP2X/PC-100 Athlon platform is beginning to limit the powerful CPU's full potential, as evidenced in some of our benchmark results.
The sooner the second generation core logic sets that deliver AGP4X/PC-133 support hit the market, the better off AMD and their customers will be. If, however, the second generation Athlon mainboards fall to an "early 2000" delivery date, which is what the latest rumors we're hearing point to, then AMD might find themselves on the losing end of the system level performance battle when comparing their AGP2X/PC-100/.25mu Athlon systems to Intel's October-bound AGP4X/RDRAM/.18mu Coppermine systems.
This is especially true if the rumors concerning a possible Intel P3-733/133 Coppermine CPU arriving in October along with the "reintroduction" of the i820 platform are true.
Still, today the focus is on the Athlon 700, which as you'll see in the benchmarks we obtained, is a staggeringly fast performer no matter what platform it uses.