As we happened to know from CNET, AMD Athlon 1.3GHz will be really announced this quarter, as Mr. Ruiz (AMD President) has said. This processor will be announced at CeBIT show in Hanover, which will be held between 2 and 28 March. This Athlon will be based on Thunderbird core and a new Palomino core will appear in desktop Athlons starting from 1.4GHz.
In addition, the first version of Athlon for notebooks will arrive March 19, i.e. before CeBIT actually starts. These processors will support Palomino core and PowerNow! Technology. As for their working frequencies, no info is available yet.
We would like to list the major differences between the old Thunderbird and the new Palomino core:

• Longer pipeline and hence higher working frequencies.
• Enhanced branch prediction algorithm.
• Lower power consumption.