AMD Athlon II X4 640: 4-Cores On The Cheap
We are officially declaring May 11, 2010 "Athlon II" day. Why you ask? Because AMD is launching a total of six new Athlon II processors today, including a new flagship model, targeted squarely at budget conscious consumers. We should point out, however, that all six of the processors launching today feature existing core microarchitectures. While they do differ from previous offerings in terms of frequency, and of course their model names, all of the new Athlon II processors arriving today are based on the same Propus (X4), Regor (X2), and Rana (X3) cores that were introduced a few months back.
The new line-up of Athlon II processors AMD is introducing today consists of the following products:
- Athlon II X4 640 - $122 (3.0GHz, 95W max TDP, 4 cores)
- Athlon II X3 445 - $87 (3.1GHz, 95W max TDP, 3 cores)
- Athlon II X2 260 - $76 (3.2GHz, 65W max TDP, 2 cores)
- Athlon II X4 610e - $145 (2.4GHz, 45W max TDP, 4 cores)
- Athlon II X3 415e - $102 (2.5GHz, 45W max TDP, 3 cores)
- Athlon II X2 245e - $77 (2.9GHz, 45W max TDP, 2 cores)
We got our hands on the new flagship Athlon II X4, the 3.0GHz Athlon II X4 640, and have its performance results posted on the pages ahead. Before we get to the numbers though, take a moment to peruse its specifications in table below...
The AMD Athlon II X4 640 Processor
AMD Athlon II X4 640 Processor
Specifications & Features
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AMD Athlon II X4 640 CPU-Z Details, Click to Enlarge
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As we have already mentioned, the new Athlon II X4 isn't based on a new core and doesn't feature any new technology. As such, we won't go into detail on the Athlon II architecture again here and will instead offer up this performance quick-take. If you would like a refresher, however, as to what makes the Athlon II tick, here are a couple of recent HotHardware articles with all of the pertinent details:
Those three articles cover all of the architectural information necessary to understand the technology at the heart of the new Athlon II X4 640 and the rest of the Athlon II line-up, for that matter.
