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CPUs 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 News By Mark Tyson published 7 March 2026 Consumer PCs have long abandoned the multi-GHz race for core count and NPU inflation. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's how it works. AMD Athlon CPU for Slot A (Image credit: Maddmaxstar) * Copy link * Facebook * X * Whatsapp * Reddit * Pinterest * Flipboard * Email Share this article 9 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. [ ] [ ] Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands [ ] Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors [Sign me up] --------------------------------------------------------------------- By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful --------------------------------------------------------------------- An account already exists for this email address, please log in. [LOG IN] Subscribe to our newsletter 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." You may like * Delidded K6-III AMD's K6-III 'Sharptooth' debuted this week in 1999 with on-die L2 cache to savage the Intel Pentium II * Data by Mercury Research, compiled by Tom's Hardware 30% of x86 CPUs sold are now made by AMD, as company's market share grows thanks to a flagging Intel * Intel 80286 CPU The Intel 286 CPU was introduced on this day in 1982 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. AMD Athlon CPU for Slot A. A 650 MHz sample. (Image credit: Tullius) 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. Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. [ ][ ]Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands[ ]Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors[Sign me up] By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. 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. Google Preferred Source Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. TOPICS AMD athlon Intel See all comments (9) Mark Tyson Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor 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. Read more Delidded K6-III AMD's K6-III 'Sharptooth' debuted this week in 1999 with on-die L2 cache to savage the Intel Pentium II Data by Mercury Research, compiled by Tom's Hardware 30% of x86 CPUs sold are now made by AMD, as company's market share grows thanks to a flagging Intel Intel 80286 CPU The Intel 286 CPU was introduced on this day in 1982 The setup used to achive a new peak clock speed world record for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D Chinese enthusiast overclocks Ryzen 7 9800X3D to 7.33 GHz, setting a new world record for the chip Steam survey for December 2025 AMD closes in on Intel in latest Steam Hardware Survey Intel vs AMD Intel vs AMD: Which CPUs Are Better in 2025? Latest in CPUs Apple Apple's 18-core M5 Max destroys 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX in Geekbench The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU sitting on the PMD2 power tester. 'CPUs are cool again,' Intel and AMD reporting spikes in CPU demand due to agentic AI Intel Intel Chairman Frank Yeary retires, Craig Barrat to become the new chairman of the Board of Directors Intel Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon 6+ CPU Desktop Ryzen AI 400 from AMD. AMD details Ryzen AI 400 desktop with up to 8 cores, Radeon 860M graphics Intel Panther Lake processor Intel mobile CPUs have achieved up to 95x performance uplift over the past two decades Latest in News Modded PS5 running Linux & playing GTA V Linux hacked onto a PS5 to turn Sony's console into a Steam Machine Steam Machine Valve changes Steam Machine release date to this 'year,' second change as AI-fueled memory and shortage crisis deepens A screenshot of a Linux directory listing with a picture of Tux, the Linux mascot, in the corner; a person is walking in the reflection on the screen. AMD VP uses AI to create Radeon Linux userland driver in Python DJI Engineer receives $30,000 for exposing a vulnerability affecting 7,000 robot vacuum cleaners Nintendo logo Nintendo sues the US government over tariffs Tracing 3D Printing Filament Scientists attempt to link 3D printed ghost guns to specific filament brands with chemical fingerprinting [ ] 9 Comments Comment from the forums * TechieTwo A very good day for AMD and consumers. Intel was stunned. History has repeated itself again in recent times and it's all good for consumers. Reply * Vanderlindemedia The beauty of these things where the overclocking options. Most known was the GFD, a Golden Finger Device. https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2019/27/1572616032266062/ contentimages/ct2719AthlonOve_103836-chh-AthlonOver_nostA.jpg You had to crack open your casing in order to be able to install that thing onto the CPU board, no soldering or anything required, but after installation, you had a free set of multipliers to choose from including voltages. What was even better, where the often 500Mhz models or higher, simply rebranded 750Mhz chips. What it means was under the hood it was a downclocked 750Mhz model which was cheaper for AMD to produce. This gave so much variety in overclocking, that even the cheap boards supported FSB's could extract free performance. However, the whole Slot A never had any true multi-cpu support as the Intel's Slot did. Reply * EzzyB It was a big deal as far as marketing went. Intel could not get it's Pentium 4 to quite clock that high. This resulted in one of the most unusual CPU releases ever when, to get to 1Ghz, they released the Intel Tualatin processor. (Note that Tualatin was NOT Coppermine) It was technically a server chip, though the Xeon name hadn't been used at that time. I built a system around one that, I believe ran at 1.13 ghz and actually had hyperthreading. While it used the same socket as the P-III it needed a different chipset that enabled an additional pin in the socket. Strangely enough the first PC program that I used that was multi-thread aware was the Alpha/Beta test of Star Wars Galaxies that would use a second thread for terrain generation if it was available. Overall the chip ran quite well and compared to the Athlon and P-IV right up until you did something memory intensive (similar to Athlon) and then the higher bus/memory speeds of the P-IV would kick in and it would prevail in memory intensive stuff. Reply * Trake_17 Fun article. Thanks for publishing it Reply * teckel12 This was a big deal, I received a 1 GHz Athlon mouse pad as some advertising promotion. Meanwhile, I was running some slow 133 MHz Cyrix clone 6x86 (M1) CPU that constantly overheated trying to play Quake. But, I had the 1 GHz mouse pad. Reply * thestryker EzzyB said: This resulted in one of the most unusual CPU releases ever when, to get to 1Ghz, they released the Intel Tualatin processor. (Note that Tualatin was NOT Coppermine) Coppermine hit 1 GHz fine it was the 1.13 GHz model which didn't work right and had to be recalled. I believe they eventually released one or two above 1 GHz but it was largely irrelevant by that time. EzzyB said: It was technically a server chip, though the Xeon name hadn't been used at that time. There were multiple Tualatin CPUs and the server ones were named PIII-S. I have my dual PIII-S 1.4GHz system in storage as I have lots of fond memories. EzzyB said: actually had hyperthreading None had hyperthreading, but they did support dual socket configurations. EzzyB said: While it used the same socket as the P-III it needed a different chipset that enabled an additional pin in the socket. It wasn't an additional pin, but rather a shift of what the pin did. I want to say it was one of the power delivery pins holding a different value. EzzyB said: Overall the chip ran quite well and compared to the Athlon and P-IV right up until you did something memory intensive (similar to Athlon) and then the higher bus/memory speeds of the P-IV would kick in and it would prevail in memory intensive stuff. My system used a Via Apollo chipset with DDR support. While I picked it because I was using dual CPUs and they shared memory bandwidth it also had advantages on memory intensive software. Reply * warezme OMG, I had totally forgotten Slot A! Dang blast from the past. I remember having one of those. Reply * 80251 DEC's Alpha was the first Ghz. CPU and it predated anything from Intel and/or AMD. RIP DEC. Reply * Thunder64 thestryker said: Coppermine hit 1 GHz fine it was the 1.13 GHz model which didn't work right and had to be recalled. I believe they eventually released one or two above 1 GHz but it was largely irrelevant by that time. There were multiple Tualatin CPUs and the server ones were named PIII-S. I have my dual PIII-S 1.4GHz system in storage as I have lots of fond memories. None had hyperthreading, but they did support dual socket configurations. It wasn't an additional pin, but rather a shift of what the pin did. I want to say it was one of the power delivery pins holding a different value. My system used a Via Apollo chipset with DDR support. While I picked it because I was using dual CPUs and they shared memory bandwidth it also had advantages on memory intensive software. You nailed just about everything I was going to say. I would only like to add that the Athlon/P-III didn't "choke" because of lack of memory bandwidth. The P4 wasn't really a bandwidth monster until the P4C anyway (excluding horrible RDRAM). The P4 simply needed that bandwidth to keep its long pipeline full especially after mispredicts. What the P4 did do very well eventually was SSE2 once software caught up. Athlon/P-III lacked it and it was a huge step forward from 3DNow!/SSE in many areas. Media transcoding comes to mind. Reply * View All 9 Comments Show more comments Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. Add as a preferred source on Google Add as a preferred source on Google * Terms and conditions * Contact Future's experts * Privacy policy * Cookies policy * Accessibility Statement * Advertise with us * About us * Coupons * Careers (c) Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.