AMD

Though AMD's presence on the show floor was limited primarily to meandering AMD representatives, Intel's rival came equipped with news capable of deadening the impact of the i845's exposure. Packaged in the form of the 760MP Multi-Processing chipset, two manufacturers displayed products based on AMD's powerful new product.

Tyan, with their Thunder K7, served as AMD's development partner for the first batch of 760MP motherboards. Naturally, this quasi-reference design is extremely feature-complete, incorporating the 760MP chipset, four registered DDR DIMM slots (for up to 3GB of memory), dual 10/100 Ethernet controllers, integrated Ultra160 SCSI, integrated ATI Rage XL graphics, and up to four USB connectors, all in an extended ATX package. Initial performance numbers from Tyan indicate that with two 1.2GHz Palomino processors, the Thunder K7 outperforms dual 1.7GHz Xeon chips in a large number of benchmarks.

MSI's offering was scaled down tremendously, but should retail below $200, in comparison to the $600 board from Tyan. Integrated graphics have been forsaken in favor of a more flexible AGP Pro connector. An additional IDE controller was added, rather than the Ultra160 SCSI solution. Also, the server-centric registered DIMM slots have made way for conventional, upright connectors.

Complimenting the motherboard immediately available from Tyan, AMD also readied their multi-processor chip, the Athlon MP. Functionally similar to the mobile Athlon 4, Athlon MP has been granted an additional marketing term to describe some of the dual-processing features inherent within AMD's architecture. Dubbed Smart MP, the technology encompassed includes AMD's EV6 point-to-point bus and a more advanced cache coherency protocol for added efficiency. While both said features have been supported since the initial launch of the Athlon, the unveiling of the 760MP is the first instance that brings either technology to fruition for AMD.