In March 2000, AMD achieved a significant milestone by shipping the first 1 GHz consumer processor, the Athlon, officially beginning the PC Gigahertz era. This launch was a major marketing coup, as it narrowly beat rival Intel to market with a shipping product, forcing Intel to announce its own 1 GHz Pentium III chip just days later.
The specific Athlon 1 GHz chip was a Slot A model built on a 180nm process, featuring a single core, 512KB L2 cache, and a launch price of $1,299. While hailed as a breakthrough akin to breaking the sound barrier, the industry has since shifted focus from pure clock speed to increasing core counts and adding specialized processors like NPUs.
Main topics: AMD's Athlon 1 GHz CPU launch, the historical milestone of entering the Gigahertz era, the competitive dynamics with Intel, and the technical specifications of the pioneering chip.
PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon — AMD hit marketing gold with its 1 GHz Athlon, beat Intel by a nose
Consumer PCs have long abandoned the multi-GHz race for core count and NPU inflation.
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Today, in the year 2000, AMD shipped an undisputable processor milestone, its 1 GHz Athlon CPU. Thus, the Gigahertz PC era was born. AMD scored marketing gold ahead of its powerful rival Intel. PC industry heavy hitters of the time, Compaq and Gateway, were key partners, and the first pre-built 1 GHz system deliveries began the following week.
Tom’s Hardware had previewed the new Athlon K7 processors back in August 1999 and reviewed a 1.1 GHz model in August 2000. Neither of these milestone chips made it into our five best AMD CPUs of all time feature, though.
AMD’s Athlon 1 GHz press release, which we are grateful is preserved by CPU Shack, was triumphant. The firm’s chairman and CEO at the time, W.J. Sanders III, likened the 1 GHz feat to aviation science’s breaking of the sound barrier. “Just as the achievement of Chuck Yeager signaled the beginning of a new era in aviation, the 1 GHz processor ushers in a new era of information technology,” said Sanders, heralding the new levels of CPU processing power. “AMD plans to lead in the gigahertz era.”
It also managed to get industry analyst quotes comparing the 1 GHz Athlon launch to man’s first steps on the moon, the breaking of the four-minute-mile athletics record, and the conquering of Everest.
Enough of the marketing bombast, what about the AMD Athlon 1 GHz specs? The first AMD Athlon processors would debut in June 1999. Over their production history, they would progress from 500 MHz to 1.4 GHz, FSB speeds from 100 to 133 MHz, and tech nodes from 250 nm to 180 nm. These K7 chips would also be made available in Slot A, Socket A, and Socket 563 platforms.
The specific 1 GHz barrier-breaking chip is thankfully cataloged by TechPowerUp. From the site's database, we can see it was a Slot A model with a bundled cooler, produced on the 180 nm process and packing 22 million transistors. Its clock speed was the magic 1,000 MHz, and it had a base clock of 100 MHz with a 10.0x multiplier. It drew 1.8V for a TDP of 65W. Of course, it was a single-core processor, before the days of hyperthreading, and came with a 128KB L1 Cache, and 512KB L2 cache. The first gigahertz Athlon's tray price at launch was $1,299.
Intel caught off guard
Intel was caught with its pants down by the AMD 1 GHz processor shipment announcement. The iconic PC chipmaker had been boasting about its breaking of the Gigahertz barrier for over a year, citing public demos of the 0.25 micron Pentium III processor pushing beyond this milestone.
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AMD’s shipping announcement prompted Intel to paper launch its 1 GHz Pentium III chip (Tray price $990) two days later. However, it was plagued by supply issues for months. Contemporary reports suggest Intel planned to ramp volume in Q3 2000, which would give AMD quite a lot of time to make merry with its 1 GHz Athlon.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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