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New AMD Athlon II CPUs to Fit Socket FM2 On the Way
AMD's Athlon CPU brand has been with us since 1999 and Slot A. It's stuck through multiple generations of CPUs and sockets and is still going strong today, albeit as AMD's budget brand. Details are starting to come through of the next generation of Athlons, however.
Based on the Piledriver architecture and fitting the upcoming socket FM2, there are so far three models in the range, the Athlon II X4 730, 740 and 750K. Although full details are not yet available, we can report the following basic specifications:
Athlon II X4-730: quad core, 2.80GHz, 4MB L2 cache, 65W TDP
Athlon II X4-740: quad core, 3.20GHz, 4MB L2 cache, 65W TDP
Athlon II X4-750K: quad core, unlocked clock multiplier, 3.40 GHz, 4MB L2, 100W TDP
Of the three, the X4-750K with unlocked clock multiplier is arguably the most interesting, since while the two lower end versions are rated for a TDP of 65W, this one is rated at 100W, significantly higher. Since, the clock speed is only 200MHz higher than the one model down, the X4-740 and it has the same number of cores and cache, the difference can't possibly be from the stock clock speed alone. Perhaps it relates to the overclockability of the CPU? It's not yet clear when these products will be released, whether they will be available at retail or OEM only, or their prices.
At first, processors from Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon 64 and 64 X2 families were offered as high-performance chips. When AMD announced Phenom brand, "Athlon" name was repurposed for budget Athlon X2, and later for Athlon II X2/X3/X4 families. The brand didn't die with introduction of A-Series "Llano" Accelerated units in 2011. The Athlon IIs for socket FM1 had the same CPU features as A-Series APUs, but lacked on-chip GPU. Athlon II processors will live on even after transition to upcoming socket FM2.
Posted by | Thu, Jul 26, 2012 - 07:28 PM
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