AMD Roadmap: New Athlon II's Coming
According to recent AMD documents that we were able to see, AMD is planning to launch a new Athlon series sometime in June of this year.
The AMD roadmap indicated that there will be several flavors of the Athlon II to choose from. When the new CPUs ship, there will be at least a 2, 3 and 4 core Athlon II all based on the same architecture. In fact, the new Athlon II's are very much based on AMD's current Phenom II. Although similar to Phenom II, the new Athlon II CPUs will not ship with shared L3 cache, which something that the Phenom II's do have.
AMD's roadmap also indicated that the upcoming Athlon II's will be based on socket AM3 and support HyperTransport 3.0 and DDR2 and DDR3 memory.
In terms of frequency, the minimum spec is 2.8 GHz going to the quad-core Athlon II, while the dual-core rings in at 3.0 GHz. The Athlon II's will also carry a maximum onboard cache of 2 MB.
Positioning for the new processors seem to indicate that the Phenom brand will take the high end while Athlon II will take much of the mainstream and lower end.

The current Athlon series are way, way different architecture than they were in 2005. AMD doesn't completely change the product line's name because it got little bumps in performance, or a core change - because they have different cores in them all the time.
If these chips are all less than $40-50, they are still a viable alternative to anything Intel produces, considering you can't get Intel under $50 unless you go with the Atom (which cannot perform with desktop chips). Even now you can get OEM Athlon X2s for under $50.
Continuing what I was saying, my $60 AMD CPU (4850E OC) performs on par with Intel models approaching $200 in games.
I -really- need to find a new tech news site.
Yes you do, for the technologically under-educated. Your 45W 2.5Ghz X2 performs on par with a 2.2-2.3Ghz Pentium Dual Core/Core 2 Duo. Thanks for playing.
Hey, AMD, Step up, With INNOVATION! Can't you just make something strong? you are not china! you are AMD!
[ not a fanboy, using intel's Q6600, happy with it, just sick of the intel's monopoly! ]
Thanks for not reading my edited version, prick.
Thats a horrible performer; 2 generations behind. Get a E5200 and it will crush your processor, OC better, and is about the same price. Are you still claiming you FX5200 is the king of GPUs too? LOL
It's about platform, clocks, and software configuration.
Like it or not, my $60 CPU, a few generations behind, outperforms an E8400.
Again, we're talking 3D programs.
LOL, you are a fool my friend. Go troll somewhere else with your FUD. The e8400 destroys your cpu. Maybe you shouldn't have dropped out of HS? McD is calling...
Nah man it's not a noob question, questions is how I learned.
Of course we'll see these in laptops, desktop versions first though.