The Year of the CPU - AMD's Dual Core Plans

AMD is also franticly working on dual core CPUs. AMD has announced that the Opteron dual core will be released soon, and that they will be available for purchase shortly, near the end of May. This is almost two months earlier than previously expected, and way before Intel’s Xeon dual core are expected. The Opterons will be named 865, 870 and 875 will and be clocked at 1.8GHz, 2GHz, and 2.2GHz. These will be aimed at four- and eight-way systems. 

Later in the year AMD will introduce the Athlon 64 dual core. These will be aimed more toward consumer PCs than servers like the Opteron.  The speeds, ratings and names have been given already. AMD is giving their dual core the “X2” name. The ratings will be 4400+, 4600+ and 4800+, with the 4800+ topping off at 2.4 GHz, the same speed as the current 4000+. Look for AMD Athlon 64 X2s in the second half of this year. These chips will hopefully continue beating Intel in many benchmarks. 

The only downside I see is that the prices of these are a lot higher than Intel’s dual core. The most expensive Intel is cheaper than the base AMD; so much for AMD being cheaper and faster. The base AMD is clocked at 2.2 GHz, while the Intel is clocked at 3.2 GHz. 

Are you still in love with your 939 socket motherboard?  Well, good news, it appears that you will be able to hang on to that motherboard for a little longer. With a simple BIOS flash, you should be able to run dual core CPUs on many of the existing 939 motherboards. 

With Intel making dual core EEs, what are we going to see from AMD?  In the past, AMD has combated the EE with their FX series. It would make sense that we would see dual core FX chips, but it looks like AMD has no plans for any. If people are willing to drop $1,000 on a CPU, then let them, add some feature, and charge an additional $600 for it.

My guess is that, since the EE isn’t anything more than a normal Pentium D with HT, AMD feels that their dual cores will keep up and/or beat the very best Intel has to offer. If what they have now beats the EE, why spend extra money in R&D to produce something a just little faster?  AMD is expected to bump up the FX line to the FX-57 very soon, and later this year and in the coming year offer more speed bumps -- roughly every month, according to the recent AMD road map.

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