"Even if T-Birds are 100 or 200 mhz slower, they'll still perform better anyways."
not necessarily true, the P4 takes off in Quake 3, a game that many of u use for benching CPU power (which is why 640X480 is used, it measure's pure T&L power/driver quality).
AMD needs to keep up in terms of mhz to be sure that people won't be drawn away because of glitzy high mhz and higher fps scores in quake 3.
my major concern is when AMD will hit 3.2 gig/second on the FSB, and what will the DDR SDRAM situation be like then (will it be fast enough?).
I know their upcoming processor will help somewhat in the mhz-mhz department (somewhat, don't expect much), and will allow them to scale alot better (less power consumption at the same die process), however Intel could easily release a new version of the P4 to counteract power problems etc as well (they don't release the perfect chip, they incrementally release better chips to milk the market).
getting this k7 core with a 400mhz FSB and equivelent RAM bandwidth abilities would certainly help ALOT in todays situation for AMD (ie, Quake would probably not be boosted so much over AMD with the P4, the only thing it would have going for it would be SSE). the reason I feel it is urgent that they do this sooner rather then later, is because they will keep intel off guard, and also not allow the P4 to garner much support because of it's higher Quake 3 scores..
if I were AMD, I would try to push the next chipset alot quicker.. as for the next core for the athlon (after the Palomino) the timing seems to be pretty good still..