AMD hit by delays (again)

AMD announced two new desktop chips yesterday, but customers won't see them until November because of lingering problems in getting its high-end chips to market.

The Athlon XP 2800+ and 2700+ will likely narrow the performance gap with Intel's Pentium 4. AMD's model numbers roughly correspond to the gigahertz speeds of the Pentium 4, which currently tops out at 2.8GHz.

Among the improvements, the new AMD chips will come with a system bus--the data path between the processor and main memory - running at 333MHz. A faster bus increases performance; current Athlons come with a 266MHz bus. Nvidia and Via Technologies will both come out with chipsets for the new chips, the two companies said.

Intel will up the stakes later this quarter with a 3GHz Pentium 4 containing Hyperthreading, a performance-enhancing technology that lets a chip handle more transactions simultaneously, similar to how a two-processor computer works.

Still, the performance race is somewhat theoretical from a consumer's perspective. In recent months, AMD has announced chips but then released them later and in lower quantities than initially expected. In the first half of the year, AMD announced chips the same day that PC makers began to sell computers containing them.

"The volumes probably aren't as high as they would like," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. "It is apparent that they don't have any difficulties in delivering processors with model numbers 2000 and below."

Other AMD chips have been hit by delays as well.

In August, for instance, the company announced the Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+, stating that the chips would come out in PCs in September. The 2400+ was originally due to come out in the second quarter.

Michael Kanellos writes for News.com