Rumours coming from Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers suggest that AMD is ready to introduce a budget Athlon 64 X2 processor to help it compete with Intel's aggressive dual core drive later this year.
The cache-cut Athlon 64 X2 3600+ will come clocked at 2.0GHz - the same speed as the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - but will only come with 256KB of L2 cache per core, compared to the 512KB of L2 cache per core featured on the X2 3800+.
The sources - cited by Digitimes - suggest that the Socket AM2-based X2 3600+ is intended for the retail market and they speculate that it will cost around US$139-160 when it launches.
This comes after AMD's announcement that it will simplify its product line by discontinuing all of its 1MB L2 cache per core chips due to numerous occasions where specifications overlapped. Cache didn't make much difference on Socket 939, and it seems to make less difference on Socket AM2, thanks to the integrated memory controller supporting DDR2 memory.
It will be interesting to see whether AMD does go ahead and launch the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ on Socket AM2. This will not be a first though, as AMD has already released a Socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ for OEM customers earlier this year. You can read more here
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The cache-cut Athlon 64 X2 3600+ will come clocked at 2.0GHz - the same speed as the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - but will only come with 256KB of L2 cache per core, compared to the 512KB of L2 cache per core featured on the X2 3800+.
The sources - cited by Digitimes - suggest that the Socket AM2-based X2 3600+ is intended for the retail market and they speculate that it will cost around US$139-160 when it launches.
This comes after AMD's announcement that it will simplify its product line by discontinuing all of its 1MB L2 cache per core chips due to numerous occasions where specifications overlapped. Cache didn't make much difference on Socket 939, and it seems to make less difference on Socket AM2, thanks to the integrated memory controller supporting DDR2 memory.
It will be interesting to see whether AMD does go ahead and launch the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ on Socket AM2. This will not be a first though, as AMD has already released a Socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ for OEM customers earlier this year. You can read more here
Discuss in the forums
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