Posted 10/23/09 at 03:30:09 PM by Paul Lilly

AMD recently announced a bunch of new processors, including its first triple-core Athlon II chip, and coming soon, the CPU  maker will also release a tri-core part for notebooks, Fudzilla says.

Planned as part of the Danube platform, the upcoming Phenom II triple-core N820 mobile processor will essentially be a quad-core part with one of the cores disabled. It will carry a 35W TDP and come packed with 1.5MB of total cache split into 512KB per core. It will also boast DDR3-1333 support, an HT speed of 3.6GT/s, and AMD-V support.

It's not yet known how fast the part will come clocked, nor is there any word on a projected release date or price point. But if AMD plays its cards right, the mobile Phenom could prove awfully tempting for consumers who want to step up from a dual-core platform but lack the ducats to go quad. Or it could force Intel's hand at lowering the price of its mobile Core 2 Quad chips. Either way, notebook shoppers stand to win.

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Posted 10/20/09 at 02:51:25 PM by Bart Salisbury

AMD has bumped up it’s line of desktop microprocessors with the introduction of a new set of Athlon II processors, including the first Athlon triple-cores. Triple-core processors, obviously, fill the gap between dual-core and quad-core versions, and, according to Nathan Brookwood of the market research firm Insight 64, offer more power than dual-cores while costing less than quad-cores, making them attractive choices for desktop makers.

The new processors include Athlon II X2s in 2.7GHz and 2.8 GHz, four Athlon II X3s ranging from 2.2 GHz up to 2.9 GHz, and Athlon II X4s at 2.2 GHz and 2.3 GHz. All of the processors pull 45 watts, except for the 2.7 GHz and 2.9 GHz X3s which draw 95 watts. All of the new Athlon IIs are manufactured using 45-nanometer dies.

AMD claims the 2.8 GHz X2 will perform up to 70 percent better on media and entertainment benchmarks than an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400, while the 2.9 GHz X3 shows a 75 percent performance jump over the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500. Overall, AMD says these new processors will offer “superior competitive value for mainstream consumers in productivity, HD video, and 3D gaming.”

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