Gateway Refutes Claim It Uses AMD Athlon

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December 03, 1999 (12:18 PM EST)

By Mark Hachman,

A spokesman for PC OEM Gateway 2000 refuted reports that it plans to ship a system using Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon microprocessor.

Rumors of Gateway's commitment to the Athlon have swirled over the last months, and Gateway representatives have anonymously told other online news sites that an Athlon-based PC is in the offing. Compaq and IBM each ship Athlon-based PCs, and Gateway has previously built machines based on older AMD chips.

In a holiday PC guide published by FamilyPC magazine, the magazine listed a system allegedly supplied by Gateway with a 600-MHz Athlon. The "Gateway Select 600" was said to be configured with the Athlon chip, 128 Mbytes of RAM, a 20.5-gigabyte hard drive, 6X DVD-ROM, a graphics card using Nvidia's Riva TNT2 graphics chip, Creative Laboratories' SoundBlaster Live sound card, 19-inch monitor, and high-end speakers, all for $2,499.

But for now, Gateway has not committed to the Athlon, and the Select 600 system has not been deployed, according to the spokesman for Gateway, San Diego. He said FamilyPC had requested systems be shipped for review several months ago and that Gateway had supplied the magazine with a prototype system at that time.

"We don't have Athlon in our current mix," the spokesman said.

He declined to comment on when and if that position might change.