One potential challenge to an AMD system purchase has long been the related motherboard technology. Early Slot A Athlons had to compete against the ultra-stable and powerful Intel BX, and neither the AMD 751 or VIA KX133 were truly up to the task. The current chipset landscape seems to have evened out for both Intel and AMD, with Intel falling a bit from its BX high point and AMD receiving unprecedented support from the industry's chipset leaders.

The AMD 760 chipset is one of the most stable implementations you can find, but its sole support for DDR memory took it out of the early running for value and mid-range systems. Now that DDR memory has drastically lowered in price, large system vendors such as Compaq have introduced a greater number of mid-range DDR systems into their lineups. Of course, AMD is not alone in producing a compatible DDR chipset, and competing products include the VIA KT266, the SiS 735 and the ALi ALiMAGiK 1.

The ALiMAGiK 1 is possibly the most interesting of the bunch, given that it has a dual memory controller and supports both DDR and SDRAM. Motherboards such as the ASUS A7A266 include DIMM sockets for both DDR and SDRAM memory formats, which can make the upgrade from current PC133 to high-performance DDR a choice rather than a requirement. The VIA KT266 has been steadily growing in vendor support and is noteworthy for its >2 DDR DIMM sockets (also supported by the ALiMAGiK 1 in pure DDR boards) and the extras (Promise/RAID controllers) that many manufacturers have been incorporating into their designs.

In terms of lower-cost SDRAM chipsets, there is also a wealth of choices when deciding on an AMD computer. VIA Technologies has two performance SDRAM chipsets, the KT133 (200 DDR) and KT133A (200/266 DDR). VIA also offers the KM133 and KLE133, which are highly-integrated chipsets with integrated video (such as S3 Savage 4/2000), modem, sound and network options. These are targeted directly at the value component of the PC market, and it is highly unlikely that performance-minded buyers would be interested. While ALi has concentrated solely on the DDR Athlon market, SiS also has a few Socket A SDRAM chipsets such as the SiS 733 and integrated SiS 703S/SE.

Although the AMD Athlon 1.4 GHZ processor is basically a higher clocked version of the same Thunderbird core design, we should still take a close look at how the top-end speed compares in performance benchmarking. To properly compare the new Athlon 1.4 GHz (266 DDR), we've assembled the Athlon 1.33 GHz and 1.2 CPUs (both 266 DDR), as well as the Intel Pentium 4-1.3, 1.5 and 1.7 GHz processors. This selection of high-end CPUs, including the fastest Intel has to offer, should help define the relative performance of the newest AMD entrant.