AMD's 65nm 'Altair' processor, the first desktop chip to be based on the company's next-generation K8L architecture, will debut Q3 2007, various Asian reports claiming to be derived from the firm's roadmaps allege.

Set to debut at between 2.7GHz and 2.9GHz, Altair will run on a 4GHz HyperTransport bus. Each core will have 512KB of directly connected L2 cache and, as per past reports, each die will have a further 2MB of L3 cache that's shared by the four cores.

The chip's TDP is stated as 125W in both its Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX incarnations - which will connect across updated versions of AMD's Socket AM2 and Socket F, respectively.

Both parts will go head-to-head with Intel's 'Yorkfield', which emerged out of the rumour mill last week as its first monolithic quad-core CPU - the upcoming 'Kentsfield' and 'Clovertown' quadies are assembled from two dual-core dies. ®

Read Reg Hardware's complete Intel Developer Forum Fall 06 coverage here