Here's why:

AMD has sold literally millions of K6-2 CPUs which are currently in use on existing Super-7 mainboard solutions. They operate at a 100MHz front side bus, and they enjoy standard features like UDMA/33 support and AGP 2X compatibility.

The Athlon, however, is designed to reap the big margin rewards that Intel's high-end CPUs have been pulling in for years. This means that when AMD brands an Athlon CPU as a 500MHz part (the lowest speed available) and are forced to sell it to OEMs or resellers for $220 to $245 each, they won't make as much money on the product as if they could brand it a 550MHz or 600MHz part and sell it for their higher prices.

Thanks to good yields on the .25 micron Athlon cores, the amount of low speed Athlons is very scarce, and that's good news for AMD as they don't want to sell the Athlon in the K6-2 price range anyway.

There is an "Athlon Select" product that will eventually be offered to the low end PC market early next year, and according to what we're hearing it will be a "socketed" design in order to reduce its price…it might even wind up being Super-7 compatible, although that's just speculation on our part at this point.

In any case, it's a good bet that the Athlon will be kept competing in the medium to high-end Pentium III market, while the K6-2 and K6-3 will soldier on in the sub-$200 price range. Given the choice between a system based on a K6-2 or even a K6-3 CPU and an Intel Celeron CPU, we'll take a Celeron hands down any day of the week.

Let's say that you're a freelance 3D modeler/artist who's currently dreaming of working for George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic division, preparing for the return of Jar-Jar Binks in the 2nd Star Wars prequel movie but actually, you are working on a low budget, space based Sci-Fi action TV show pilot.

In between the disturbing phone calls from the first assistant's assistant, who keeps insisting that you add more fuzzy aliens to the shot for the stuffed collectable product tie-in marketing angle of the show, you decide that your current Pentium 2 400 PC isn't cutting the mustard anymore as it seems to take forever to re-render each scene.

Now since you're a freelancer and possibly not being paid a King's ransom for your work (their hollow promises of "Think of what this will do for your career!" ring in your head) you've got to get the best rendering platform that you can…within reason.

Scenario Answer: AMD Athlon 550 CPU + Mainboard

Since rendering is one of the strongest areas for the Athlon CPUs, we can easily make this recommendation.

In fact, the Athlon is so strong in its handling of 3D images thanks to its impressive FPU that it makes perfect sense to us if you save a little money and pickup the 550MHz Athlon in lieu of the dramatically more expensive Athlon 600 or 650.

You'll wind up with a CPU that uses 3D Studio MAX more efficiently than a more expensive Intel P3-600 CPU, which means that you can render more fuzzy aliens that much more quickly. Just think of what you could do for Jar-Jar's wagging tongue…