AMD Roadmap: New Athlon II's Coming

By Tuan An Nguyen
published

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.

Tuan An Nguyen
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • shabodah
    I'm all for some low-power (15-45 watt) dual core 45nm variants (and AMD desperately need better mobile variants), but beyond that, I don't see how AMD can justify processors much below (performance wise) their current offerings.
    Reply
  • mcnuggetofdeath
    So some quick googling leads me to believe the athlon 64x2 architecture launched around 2005 ( couldnt find a specific date ) and everyone knows the core 2 thrashed it. Intel perfected that winning architecture by adding more cache and lowering power consumption while vastly increasing clock speeds. While AMD has yet to do any of these things. For the record, adding 2mb of L3 cache does nothing for rendering or anything outside of multitasking. And when compared to the massive boost intel put into the core 2's at L2 ( 12mb ) , which runs at a much higher frequency, its simply left in the dust. Where is the AMD that innovated, brought us the 64bit CPU, led the industry and at times dared to threaten intel's grip on the market. I want my old AMD back. I want a new architecture, I want to be able to brag about having an AMD cpu, and not have to settle for Intel. Intel has moved on, although im not fond of Hyper-threading and the shift to larger L3 caches, why hasnt AMD?
    Reply
  • antilycus
    Make Phenom that main CPU, make ATHON II your "celeron" and come up with a new name...
    Reply
  • thedipper
    McNuggetOfDeath,

    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.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    Athlon is the new Duron/Sempron just as Pentium is the new Celeron. I don't like that at all, but at least they aren't reversing the process like NVIDIA, calling an old 8800 a new gtx250.

    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.
    Reply
  • thedipper
    My 4850E was/is $60 and far outperforms an Intel
    Reply
  • thedipper
    Nice site, Tom's.

    Continuing what I was saying, my $60 AMD CPU (4850E OC) performs on par with Intel models approaching $200 in games.
    Reply
  • thedipper
    thedipperMy 4850E was/is $60 and far outperforms an Intel
    I -really- need to find a new tech news site.
    Reply
  • KyleSTL
    thedipperMy 4850E was/is $60 and far outperforms an IntelthedipperI -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.
    Reply
  • vaskodogama
    This is a bad way AMD stepping in! I'm sure of it!
    Hey, AMD, Step up, With INNOVATION! Can't you just make something strong? you are not china! you are AMD!
    Reply