REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 9, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that a broad range of Microsoft® products achieve new levels of performance on systems powered by the new Athlon processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD). Microsoft products that run faster on the AMD Athlon platform include the Windows® 98 and Windows NT® 4.0 operating systems, as well as other Windows technologies such as the DirectX® API. Today leading applications such as Windows Media TM technologies are optimized to achieve high levels of performance with the AMD Athlon processor, and Microsoft is committed to ensuring that application developers will be able to capitalize on the new AMD Athlon processor. In addition, forthcoming products such as Windows 2000 are poised to take ultimate advantage of the new chip.
“To help deliver optimal performance to all users of Windows, the entire spectrum of Microsoft products and technologies support the AMD Athlon, providing a robust foundation for AMD’s powerful new processor,”
said David W. Williams, director of Windows Hardware Platforms at Microsoft.
“The Athlon platform will launch a new generation of high-performance computers that provide an enhanced Windows computing experience for all types of users. Based on our internal testing of Windows 2000 on the AMD Athlon processor, we predict that business customers will be impressed with the performance.”
Business users are one example of those who will benefit from the enhanced performance. Microsoft worked with AMD through the design process to help ensure that the combination of the floating-point performance of the AMD Athlon processor and Microsoft’s enterprise software would provide a corporate-ready hardware and software platform for application-critical workstation implementations.
“The AMD Athlon processor sets a new performance standard for Microsoft products such as Windows NT 4.0 for high-performance enterprise-level computing,”
said Dana Krelle, vice president of Marketing for AMD’s Computation Products Group.
“With the significant performance enhancements offered in the AMD Athlon processor and the industry-leading Microsoft operating systems, applications, technologies and development tools, users will now have access to the ultimate platform for high-powered computing.”
Windows Support for AMD Athlon Processor Enables Optimal End-User Experience
The current Windows operating systems, including Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0, deliver superior performance on computers powered by the AMD Athlon processor, according to the Ziff-Davis Business Winstone 99 benchmark.* This increased level of performance enables an improved end-user experience. Native support for the AMD Athlon processor platform within current Microsoft operating systems provides an optimal user experience on a Windows-compatible processor-based system.
AMD Athlon Processor and Windows Media Enhance Web Experience
The AMD Athlon processor offers enhancements to users of Windows Media Technologies 4.0 to accelerate the encoding of audio and video content. The Windows Media audio and video format is used in PowerPoint® 2000 Web-based presentations and other applications that can be multicast from a Windows Media Server. The high-speed video compression enabled by the AMD Athlon processor provides users with new levels of productivity for many kinds of multimedia projects. For example, users can send video clips via e-mail over the Internet, create high-impact online catalogs, train personnel remotely, and edit and store video clips in both personal and professional video-editing applications.
Microsoft Will Enable Development Tools for AMD Athlon Platform
Developers for the Visual C++® development system will be able to take advantage of the new AMD processor architecture to optimize for maximum performance on the AMD processor platform.
“We are happy to be working closely with AMD to ensure developers for Visual Studio® will have the ability to be extremely productive in creating high-performance applications capable of exploiting the technical innovations of the new AMD processors,”
said Marie Huwe, group product manager for Development Tools at Microsoft.
“Intrinsic support for AMD features in Visual Studio will enable millions of application developers to take advantage of building fast applications for this new processor.”
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
*To view the exact data set, see http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/benchmarks/benchmarks.html for performance results.
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