The very first Athlon K7 arrived in the shape of the Pluto core for Slot A. It offered speeds of between 500 MHz and 700 MHz. Manufactured using 0.25-micron technology, this processor contained over 22 million transistors and put the Intel Pentium II and III in the shade. Shortly afterwards, AMD went one better when it introduced the smaller Orion core (K75) using 0.18 technology. Speeds of up to 1000 MHz were now possible with Slot A. The 512 KB L2 cache was located externally on the processor module.

AMD Athlon K75 with Orion core for Slot A.

Milestone in the world of x86: AMD Athlon.

Still in a cartridge: the first AMD Athlon for Slot A.

AMD Athlon 800 for Slot A.

View of the AMD Athlon 800 - you can see the so-called "goldfinger" connectors at the top left.

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