A direct comparison to the Pentium III is likely to occur. The company plans to showcase performance tests matching Thunderbird against a 1-GHz Pentium III, said Ben Anixter, AMD vice president of corporate affairs. Spitfire will share the same basic processor core as Thunderbird but will come with a smaller cache, a slower bus and different packaging. It will be made of aluminum. AMD may also unveil the official brand name of the processor. Like Intel, AMD has said it will market its budget line of processors under a different brand name. Although the company has enjoyed strong sales recently, there are hurdles looming on the horizon. Spitfire, some analysts have speculated, could end up being more expensive than the Celeron because of its comparatively large size. AMD also could face the same sort of shortages that Intel is experiencing. Intel's strategy shift By contrast, Intel's meeting, which will begin at 8 a.m. PT and will be broadcast over the Web, will concentrate more on the Internet than on PCs.