Introduction
Although today is the official shipping date for 1.1GHz processors, AMD began to ship the processor to leading computer manufacturers on August 14 2000, allowing sufficient time for manufacturers to commence shipment of complete systems from today. We received our test system on the 22 August 2000, enabling us to bring this review to you exclusively. One factor that remains as a high priority for any consumer purchasing a new system or upgrading is performance, this is driven by today's demanding games, application software and the never ending new versions of Windows operating software. Recognising this fact is one thing and releasing a product that can keep up with the ever-increasing performance spiral is another. AMD seem to have done just that with the Athlon and now Thunderbird processors, coupled with a redefinition of pricing structures that will assist AMD to meet its goal of shipping 9 million units in the fourth quarter.

This time last year a leading edge £1850.00 PC featured the 650MHz Athlon processor, but today for approximately the same amount you can unleash the power of a 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird processor (read our review on the Thunderbird 1GHz Processor - click here.). We understand pricing for the 1.1GHz based systems will be between £1800.00 - £2500.00 ex VAT, manufacturers releasing 1.1GHz system include Panrix, Mesh, Gateway, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard to name but a few. Our Verdict section details current AMD processor pricing and performance ratio comments for the 1GHz and 1.1GHz Athlon Thunderbird processors. This we hope will help your decision making process a tad simpler.

How We Carried Out Our Tests

Our objective was to test the performance, implementation, stability, and ease of use of the AMD 1.1GHz Thunderbird processor, and carry out a comparative review using the AMD 1.0GHz Thunderbird processor. To achieve our objective, we used 3DMARK 2000, Content Creation Winstone 2000 and BAPCo's SYSmark 2000.

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