eWeek: AMD Rolls Out New Athlon Processors
The Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker announced Dec. 12 that it would begin shipping the Athlon 64 X2 5400 and the 5600 to OEMs, which AMD said will include Dell. The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker already uses Athlon processors in its line of Dimension desktops.
Since dual-core chips were first introduced by Intel, with the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor in 2005, and later by AMD, OEMs, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Gateway, have all begun offering numerous high-end desktops and notebooks that feature the technology, which offers two processing cores on a single piece of silicon.
In a statement, AMD officials said the two new dual-core processors would offer better graphics performance, while reducing power costs. The two chips will also support Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, which requires a much more powerful processor in order for users to access all its features.
The 5400 and the 5600 each offer speeds of 2.8GHz, an AM2 socket and an 89-watt thermal design. With the 5400 , AMD is offering 512KB per core of L2 cache memory, while the 5600 offers 1MB per core of L2 cache memory. [Read on]