New 65nm Athlon 64 X2s Coming Soon

by Dave Altavilla — Saturday, December 16, 2006, 09:30 AM EDT

Since this information is technically not under NDA embargo, we thought we'd share with you that AMD is soon releasing volume to the channel of their new 65nm process-based Athlon 64 X2 dual core chips for socket AM2. The features and performance of these new cores will remain unchanged versus current 90nm models but the tighter manufacturing geometries and die size reduction will result in much lower power and cost structures. At the very least, these new processors will allow for a few nice upgrade options for those of you that have invested in socket AM2. Here's what AMD had to say about the test kits we received recently...

"The move to 300mm wafers and 65nm keeps AMD at the cutting edge of industry innovation and competitiveness. We can produce more processors on a 300mm wafer, for increased production capacity. Please note, there have not been performance-specific architectural enhancements made in this transition to 65nm, so you can expect that a 65nm X2 5000+ will perform pretty much the same as a 90nm X2 5000+ (same cache & frequency), while consuming less power and creating less heat. AMD has enabled half-step CPU multipliers with our 65nm processors, so you will notice 100MHz frequency intervals now. Below, you will see some model numbers have a different cache/frequency specifications on 65nm than they did with 90nm. However, you will see they fit in with other model numbers in a logical way with appropriate performance characteristics based on frequency and cache (among other equal factors)."

NEW 65nm AMD ATHLON 64 X2 PROCESSOR TECH SPECS:
Frequency / Cache Sizes: 5000+ 2.6GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core (Price: $301)
Frequency / Cache Sizes:  4800+ 2.5GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core (Price: $271)
Frequency / Cache Sizes:  4400+ 2.3GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core (Price: $214)
Frequency / Cache Sizes:  4000+ 2.1GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core (Price: $169)
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Jeff is taking a look at the performance of the 5K in the next week or so and we'll let you know how she runs as soon as we can pull the numbers together. We're expecting this chip to overclock like no tomorrow but only time and testing will tell...

Tags: 65nm, Athlon, X2, Athlon 64, COM

New 65nm Athlon 64 X2s Coming Soon

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