Some reports have hinted that Bill Gates will spill the beans on X-Box at his keynote speech during Comdex. But as it stands now, the X-box is not the final name per se and is merely a term picked upon by the media 'en mass' and as a result has stuck until such a time that Microsoft puts out a press release- if indeed they ever will. We say that because the information we were given was that the 'X-box' is far from being a definite project and merely an area that, "Microsoft wishes to explore". And our contact went on to say that, "Microsoft explores many different arenas".

Current rumors in the media have pointed towards AMD's powerful Athlon processor becoming the 'guts' of the X-Box. Bear in mind that Microsoft would be attempting to price this console below the $300 mark and not only would it require a .18micron Athlon (as opposed to the .25micron Athlon on sale today) but a massive price cut would need to be implmented. How else is this X-box to be priced at under $300? We've been informed that there have indeed been discussions with AMD. It looks as though Microsoft has realized that AMD does posses the capability yield needed to assist with such a product. But understand that nothing has been set in stone and that Intel has also been approached in a similar fashion.

Here's a 'shocker' for you- we've been told that it's not only been the Athlon that they've been looking at but also the K6-3 450-500MHz range of CPUs. The other CPU of interest at AMD seems to be the imminent K6-2+ 500MHz, running with a 100Mhz front side bus and manufactured on a .18micron process. This CPU, which will harbor 128K L2 cache on-die will hit the market in Q1 of 2000. Is it any surprise that Microsoft is looking at a K6-2/3 as well as an Athlon? Not really, we're dealing with a 'Console' (remember that), which if successful, will require a huge supply of cheap (can't emphasize that enough) CPUs. The k6-2+ 500MHz will fit the bill nicely being cheap whilst at the same time providing enough FPU power if used correctly with 3D architecture. Neither the Athlon nor Coppermine are particularly cheap and would rocket the price sky high and out of the console market and instead into the PC-Arena. Ask yourself this question, does the Dreamcast suffer from a Hitachi-SH4 'limited' to a frequency of 200MHz? Does it heck… So don't be too worried when scouring over an X-Box spec sheet only to find a K6-2/3.