Name change likely for AMD’s Athlon

PCWorld: “AMD plans to change its Athlon naming scheme to better compete with Intel’s high-speed Pentium 4, according to published reports. Executed carefully, the
supposed plan could be a real boon to the megahertz-strapped chip maker, analysts say.

AMD officials decline to comment on the report, which says the company will in October rename its flagship Athlon CPU, attaching numeric codes that correspond
to similar-performing P4 chips. Intel’s P4 chip, now running at up to 2 GHz, has far outpaced AMD’s 1.4-GHz Athlon in terms of frequency. However, most
benchmarks (including PC World’s tests) show the Athlon’s overall performance is quite comparable to the higher-frequency P4. Under the scheme, names of new
Athlons might reflect that.”