A brief history of this article…
The original article (the “prequel”) was written by former PC Mechanic Editor-in-Chief and Forum Administrator Matthew A. Dockter. Authored back in March 2001, an otherwise boring history of microprocessor manufacturers’ marketing schemes and developing technologies was written in an informal, enjoyable story-plot style. As it was long overdue for a revision, I decided to write Part II, picking up with the development of the K7 AMD Athlons. While I tried to cover many important moves from the chip giants, unfortunately, I could not cover everything in the scope of this article.

BX Chipset — an ageless warrior
Let’s make one thing very clear. Intel unleashed a very powerful chip with the BX chip in 1998. In many ways, it was probably one of the most successful chipsets ever released, taking into account its longevity and the type of technology it was able to employ over its lifetime. BX was originally made coinciding with the success of Intel’s Pentium II line of processors. When releasing the first iterations of the Pentium III, Intel really had to question — is it worth killing something that’s so successful? BX lived on — and lived up to its current fame through most of the Pentium III days (including the Tualatin’s). While successors were planned and released (ie. the i815 chipset), it never really replaced the BX chipset in terms of what visible performance it brought to the table. The only downside of the BX was it could not run at 133 FSB without seriously overclocking the AGP bus since it had a fixed 2/3 divider. BX chipsets were also limited to AGP 2X at 3.3V and ATA33 unlike many of its later competitors.

Clockspeed Wars Picks up…
Many manufacturers practically abandoned AMD once they knew of what the BX could do. AMD had chips, but there were no motherboards for it. FIC, Micronics, and Gigabyte reaped the rewards. Asus, AOpen, Tyan, and Soyo hopped onto the AMD bandwagon. The “K7″ Athlons introduced dual-pumped front side bus. Simply, the front side bus (FSB) can run twice as efficient as the normal bus speed. Intel abandoned the slot CPUs and released an FC-PGA (Socket 370) processor using a new .18 micron fab process dubbed “Coppermine”. Smaller fabrication process generally means higher potential clock speeds. FC-PGA package equals cheaper productions. The Coppermine also halved the level two cache, but it now ran at the full speed of the processor resulting in net gained speed. AMD upped the ante and surprised many by rolling out 700Mhz. Apparently, they were able to sustain decent yields with it to the surprise of many analysts. Intel released 733Mhz, but the yields were unsatisfactory. Intel’s major customer, Gateway, publicly criticized Intel’s inability to keep up yields with the Coppermine Pentium III’s. AMD rolls out the 850Mhz and 900Mhz. Intel keeps up pace with the Coppermine 933Mhz. Computer enthusiasts and overclockers could see 1Ghz with their eyes now.

Thunderbird flashes into the high-end market
At the same time, AMD started to “change its direction” just as Intel jumped onto Coppermine. AMD’s Athlon “Thunderbird” incorporated many basic improvements that made it a rather successful revision. Compared to the early Athlons, the Thunderbirds had half the level-two cache. They had 256k L2 cache, as opposed to the 512k L2 cache on the early Athlons. Bad, you would say? Not really — while there was physically less cache, Thunderbirds had more powerful and faster full-speed L2 cache. Thunderbird, like the Coppermine, also saw a major design overhaul by ditching Slot A for Socket 462 (a.k.a. Socket A). The advantages of a PGA (pin grid array) package were obvious — cheaper to produce, easier possible cooling among them.

Celerons and Durons: battle for the low-end
While the high-end market was gaining momentum, Intel and AMD dared not abandon the low-end segment. Intel continued to produce the Pentium-II based Celerons WITH level two cache. That Celeron was limited by a 66Mhz bus speed. With decreasing pressure from AMD’s end in that market segment, Intel’s Celeron processors became largely popular. Intel originally released the Celerons with 266Mhz clockspeed and continued to scale upwards. Of course, they always lagged behind the pricier Pentium II line. They bumped the speeds to 300Mhz. Then 333Mhz. Eventually, there were Celeron 400Mhz CPU’s that were still based off the Pentium-II architecture, but on the newer PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) socket design. Intel upped the clockspeed as high as 533Mhz on a Pentium-II Celeron. Intel then released a FC-PGA Pentium-III Coppermine version of the Celeron. They bumped the processor bus speeds. They raise their clockspeeds. And then AMD finally makes a move.

After the Coppermine-128 Celerons (ie. Pentium III Celeron) were released, AMD unveils a new line of processors named AMD Duron. The Durons, like the Celerons, were crippled revisions of the company’s “cream of the crop” processors. So what’s different? AMD held one major advantage over the Celeron. The original dual-pumped front side bus stuck, and so it offered a 200 Mhz FSB over the Celeron’s 66Mhz FSB speed. Intel responded when they upped the FSB to 100 Mhz. The war rages on…