Better news from AMD comes in the size, shape and form of their new 'Legacy Free' PC, which we saw for the first time. Designed by Design Edge, the little unit was very industrial looking and wouldn't look out of place in a Bang & Olufson dealership- yes the design was that good. Based upon a concept of simplicity and 'true' plug and play, the product will initially be targeted at the sub-$1000 PC sector with the hope of being as low as $599. The reference design we saw was a socket 7 motherboard (based upon the FLexATX motherboard form factor) with schematics. Make no mistake this is a 'crash test dummy' PC with only two upgradable slots: the single memory slot and the CPU (we're not sure whether both will be soldered when the part ships). With set-top boxes becoming more widely used, AMD might well have given themselves another niche to play ball in.

Taiwan based CPU supplier, Rise Technology, was demonstrating their top-secret .18micron manufactured mP6-366MHz and mP6 II CPUs today. Further proof that Taiwan is fully capable of producing chips based on a .18 micron process. The chips are both Socket370 pin compatible and we saw both Forsaken and Quake II running at well over 60fps. It looks like there could be some life left in the old dog that is Socket 7. The chips will both be available in desktop and mobile form later this year (sorry we can't do any better than that at this time).