AMD unveils four dual-core Turion CPUs

AMD has launched its dual-core Turion 64 X2 notebook-oriented microprocessor line, as expected. Today's introduction saw the arrival of four of the chips aggressively priced to match what AMD is already charging for its top-of-the-line single-core Turions.

The four new CPUs - aka 'Taylor' - are the TL-50, TL-52, TL-56 and TL-60. The first two are clocked at 1.6GHz, the TL-56 at 1.8GHz and the TL-60 at 2GHz. All four use AMD's new DDR 2 SDRAM-supporting Socket S1 interface and are fabbed at 90nm. DDR 2 support extends to 667MHz memory, not the 800MHz some pre-release rumours had suggested.

The TL-50 contains twin 256KB caches, while the TL-52, TL-56 and TL-60 all have two lots of 512KB cache.

The TL-50 and TL-50 both have TDPs of 31W, rising to 33W for the TL-56 and 35W for the TL-60.

In a desperate bid to match Intel's Digital Media Boost trademark, part of its Core 2 Duo technology, AMD launched one of its own: Digital Media XPress. Essentially, it's a new name for PowerNow!, the MMX, SSE, SSE 2 and SSE 3 compatibility system AMD's offered for some time.

The four Turion 64 X2s are priced at $184, $220, $263 and $354, respectively, when sold in batches of 1000 CPUs. ®