AMD roadmaps Phenom II, quad-core Athlons
All change
AMD's upcoming Phenom revamp, based on the introduction of the Socket AM3 interconnect, will indeed be dubbed the 'Phenom II' while versions of the family will become the first three- and four-core Athlons.
According to Asian industry moles cited by Chinese-language site HKEPC, the upcoming Athlon X2, X3 and X4 will contain - as their names suggests - two, three an four processing cores. To distinguish them from similarly styled Phenom IIs, they'll lack an L3 cache.
The three new Athlons are codenamed 'Regor', 'Rana' and 'Propus', and all but Regor were, only a month or so back, expected to debut as Phenom-brand parts.
Both 'Heka' and 'Deneb' - respectively, three- and four-core AM3 CPUs - will still debut as Phenoms, but now as Phenom II xxx chips rather than Phenon 20xxx products.
The details supplied by the moles have Heka down as the Phenom II X3 7xx. It has 6MB of L3, as does the Deneb-based Phenom II X4 9x5. The Phenom II X4 8xx has 4MB of L3.
All of these are AM3 chips. As expected, the first Deneb, which is due to be launched early next year, will be an AM2+ part: the Phenom II X4 9x0. Two chips will arrive on 8 January: the 2.8GHz 920 and the 3GHz 940, both with 6MB of L3.
They'll be followed in February with the AM3-based 2.6GHz X4 910 and the 2.8GHz X4 925. February will also see the arrival of the 2.5GHz X4 805 and the 2.6GHz X4 810 - both have 4MB of L3.
Two Phenom II X3s will arrive in the same timeframe: the 2.6GHz 710 and the 2.8GHz 720.
The next big launch comes in April: the 3GHz Phenom II X4 945, along with all those new Athlons. Running up the list, we'll see the 2.6GHx X3 410, the 2.8GHz X3 420, the 2.5GHx X4 605 and the 2.7GHz X3 615.
Two more new Athlons - the 2.7GHz X2 235 and the 2.8GHz X2 240 - will debut in June, it's claimed.
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COMMENTS
Too Late
AMD currently do well at the low - mid range sector but for the High end/Enthusiast the Phenoms just dont compete. I highly doubt these Phenom II's will make any headway towards competing with the i7 which is what im going for next. The question with the i7 is do you go for an ATi or nVidia based graphics card or have both for a laugh
Memories of an oldie
Having worked on CPU and MMU design 40 years ago, I continue to be amazed that we use basically the same CPU architecture (at least 50 years new) and, while running it so much faster and cramming more and more functions in, actually manage to make it work properly. We simulated the design 40 years ago and made it work first time, that skill was then lost for a while, and then it came back and delivers.
