As for now, and the immediate future, AMD is working to stay competitive by wringing more performance out of its current Athlon XP chip while it puts the finishing touches on its Opteron and its Athlon 64. Three new Athlons -- the 2600+, 2700+ and 2800+ -- were announced in November and run at speeds between 2.13GHz and 2.25GHz, according to PC makers. The model rating system compares the new Athlons' relative performance to a previous version of the chip. But it also serves as a rough comparison to Intel's Pentium 4. The Athlon XP 2800+, AMD contends, performs the same or possibly better than a 2.8GHz Pentium 4. Several PC builders have begun offering the 2800+, with Falcon Northwest introducing on Monday desktops containing the chip. Hewlett-Packard, which is offering the XP 2600+ now, is also expected to deliver a desktop with an Athlon XP 2700+ soon. Down the line, AMD will begin selling a version of the Athlon XP, dubbed Barton, with a supersized 512KB cache. The cache, which holds data close to the processor core for quick access, will give the chip an additional boost before AMD launches the Opteron for servers and the Athlon 64 for desktops. Those chips are expected during the first quarter, or possibly at the beginning of the second quarter, of 2003. The new chips help bolster AMD's prospects for hanging on to its market share in the future, analysts said. "We're seeing some improvement on the top end of the Athlon XP, where we have Barton on the schedule," said Dean McCarron, analyst with Mercury Research. "It pretty much amounts to AMD holding position. It's a case of how the Hammer (Opteron and Athlon 64) product bears out, and does that push AMD up or not." AMD's market share sunk to 12.4 percent of the PC chip market in the third quarter, versus 21.8 percent at the company's market-share peak in the second quarter of 2001, McCarron said. The third-quarter figure excludes sales of Microsoft's Xbox game console -- which uses Intel PC chips. AMD was hard hit by excess chip inventory produced by a slowdown in PC sales during the second quarter of this year, McCarron said. AMD has said its prospects have improved for the fourth quarter due to stronger sales.
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