AMD's Quad Core Processors Starting at $206

With only days to go before the official launch of its first line of central processing unit that are built using a quad core design, AMD releases pricing information for two of the incoming series of processors, the Opteron 2300 and 8300 families. The 2300 and 8300 series will be officially launched this month and they will come with running frequencies between 1.7 and 2.0GHz.

The long awaited quad core processors codenamed Barcelona and commercially available under the Opteron brand will come for starters in only two variants: standard and high efficiency, or HE for short, which means lower power consumption. Standard quad core Opteron processors will have a thermal dissipation envelope of 95W while the slower high efficiency central processing units will come with a lower TDP of only 65W. While AMD announced the existence of a high performance standard edition processor with a TDP value of 120W, that line of products will not be available in the first part of the month.

The quad cored Opteron 2300 series will be made up of five new models like 2350, 2347, 2347 HE, 2346 HE and 2344 HE and those processors are capable of working in a multi socket environment. Their pricing will start at just $206 and according to the news site dailytech it will go up as high $372. The high efficiency models from the Opteron 2300 line of products will be a little more expensive than the standard versions but that is only to be expected as they will allow users to save some money later because they use less energy and need less cooling. Clock for clock the HE versions come with a $60 price increase over the announced pricing scheme available for the standard edition processors.

As the multi-way server environment is expanding fast, AMD decided to launch four quad-core Opteron 8300 models, the 8350, 8347, 8347 HE and 8346 HE. As expected, the multi socket capable central processing units from the 8300 series are priced a little higher as they come with an entry level price of $688 and top at about $1000. In this case too the high efficiency models are more expensive, users having to pay an approximate $110 price premium.