Intel will release a low power Pentium MMX for notebooks and a 'Pentium Pro overdrive'. This 'overdrive' will be a Pentium II for Socket 8. It will reach clock speeds of 233, 266 and 300MHz. At the beginning of 1998, there will be three different Pentium II CPU's. One of them we already know (slot one). The second one will be a smaller version for notebooks. The third Pentium II will have a larger level 2 cache that will run at the clock speed of the processor (in the current Pentium II this is only half the clock speed!). These processors will fit in a 'slot two', so be careful: if you buy a slot one board now you probably will have to stick to the current Pentium II CPU's! Higher clock speeds for the Pentium II are expected too! 333, 366, 400, 433, 466 and 500MHz in the first half of next year. Soon the 440LX chipset will come out (by August), which will support SDRAM, AGP and Ultra-DMA. The next chipsets (the 440BX and the 440NX) are meant to run at 100MHz bus speed. The 440NX will support more than four CPU's. Intel is already working on their 64-bit CPU (the 'Merced'). This CPU will run at 1000MHz and more. This CPU will probably come out by the end of the century.

Not very much to say about AMD. They work hard on their 300MHz K6, and their 100MHz bus speed project is almost round. If they want to keep up with Intel, they will have to release their first 100MHz bus speed board as fast as possible. I believe that there is still a lot to expect from AMD. I'm sure they'll have an answer to the 500MHz Pentium II too.

Although the M2 seems to be a well performing CPU, faster speeds aren't announced yet. Their fastest CPU currently is 187/75Mhz (PR2 233). Hopefully faster M2's will be released by the end of this year.

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