AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Introduction and Specifications
AMD has been fairly quiet as of late. A few months ago, we took a look at their initial Quad-FX platform and FX-70 series offerings. However, on the mainstream socket AM2 front, AMD hasn't made any real noise since the release of the Athlon 64 FX-62 way back in May of 2006. That's not to say AMD hasn't released any products since then. In fact, the company has launched a plethora of lower-clocked "Energy Efficient" processors for the platform and replaced the 125W Athlon 64 FX-62 with an 89W X2 5600+ at the same 2.8GHz and cache size. Frankly, enthusiasts waiting for a new flagship socket AM2 processor haven't had much to read about. Thankfully, there is news from the AMD home-front today.
Today AMD is officially unveiling a new top-of-the-line socket AM2 processor, the Athlon 64 X2 6000+. The X2 6000+ sports a full 1MB of L2 cache per core and is clocked at a healthy 3.0GHz, just like the FX-74. Its cache configuration and clock speed should make the X2 6000+ the fastest desktop CPU to come out of AMD. So, what do you say we fire it up and see how it performs in comparison to the rest of today's high-end processor offerings?
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We have posted a wealth of information regarding AMD's Athlon 64 processors and related core-logic chipsets over the last few months here at HotHardware.com. For some more background on the technologies employed by AMD's Athlon 64 processors and the AMD AM2 and Quad-FX platforms as a whole, we suggest taking a look at few of the related articles listed below. They contain detailed explanations of some of the features common to AMD's legacy products, compatible chipsets, and the enhancements make to various dual-core processors:
- AMD Quad-FX Platform and FX-70 Series Processors
- AMD Socket AM2 Athlon 64 FX-62 and 5000+ Evaluation
- NVIDIA nForce 600 Series Evaluation (nForce 680i SLI)
- AMD Quad-Father 4x4 Technology Update
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Energy Efficient Processor Evaluation
We cover some specifics regarding AMD's current dual-core socket AM2 processor offerings in our FX-62 and 5000+ evaluation, and cover many of the details regarding the nForce 600 family of chipsets in our evaluation of the nForce 680i SLI. And our Quad-FX platform and Quad-Father technology update articles have all of the details regarding Quad-FX and its related FX-70 series processors. We suggest perusing these articles if you're unfamiliar with AMD's technology. They'll lay the groundwork for the technology covered on the forthcoming pages.