AMD - continued
The Socket A platform looks very healthy indeed, with multiple chipset manufacturers ready to release new chipsets soon. NVIDIA's nForce, SiS's 745, and AMD's own 760MPX were on display—and VIA's KT266A was everywhere. AMD's chipset emphasis is largely on helping its partners succeed while encouraging them to incorporate technologies like HyperTransport, IEEE 1394, and (primarily for the Duron) unified memory architectures with integrated graphics.

A 760MPX motherboard on display

The nForce is with you

Just for fun, AMD was showing off a sweet little PC built by an outfit out of Canada called Voodoo PC. The violently green Voodoo PC box was running the upcoming Condition Zero expansion for Counter-Strike, which looked nice—the textures were much more detailed than most of the Half-Life-based games we've seen.

Voodoo PC's wicked green machine showcases AMD tech

The Voodoo PC showing off Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

The big emphasis out of AMD this year was on its True Performance Initiative, or TPI for short. TPI is shorthand for AMD's efforts to realign the industry around processor performance measured empirically, instead of simple clock speeds. TR readers are already very familiar with the reasons why higher MHz and GHz numbers don't always add up to higher performance, so we won't revisit those issues now. Suffice to say that AMD is shouting that message from the rooftops, which is probably a very good thing for the whole market, long term.

Reflecting on our visit with AMD this year, we couldn't help but think back to the plans AMD laid out for us at last year's Comdex. They have now accomplished virtually everything they had intended to accomplish by the end of 2001. Schedules may have been pushed back a little bit here and there, but at present, AMD is exactly where they said they would be last year.