14 DAY TRIAL // Initially scheduled for a Q4 2010 release, the Athlon II X2 270 has now emerged in a series of HP desktops and recent reports claim that the CPU will only be available in OEM systems as AMD is preparing a faster version of the chip, dubbed the X2 275, for the retail channel.
The Athlon II line of processors are based on the same K10.5 architecture as the more expensive Phenom II CPUs, but lack support for Level 3 cache memory.
Just as its name implies, the Athlon II X2 270 has two processing cores that are clocked at 3.4 GHz. 100MHz higher than the fastest boxed dual-core Athlon II available, the 265, and the chip also features 2MB of L2 cache.
In addition to the CPU cores, the X2 270 also integrates a dual-channel memory controller, that can work with DDR2 and DDR3 memory, and single 16-bit HyperTransport link, clocked at 2 GHz.
The rest of its features list is common for all of AMD's latest CPUs and it includes support for the SIMD instructions set (up to SSE3), 64-bit operation, Enhanced Virus Protection, Virtualization, and Cool'n'Quiet technology.
The AMD Athlon II X2 270 has a TDP of 65W and is compatible with the current AM3 and AM2 motherboards, as well as with the upcoming AM3+ boards.
As noted earlier, the Athlon II X2 670 is only available in the OEM market, but some chips are already available on eBay for $70 US.
Later in Q2 AMD plans to introduce an even faster dual-core Athlon processor, the X2 275, which will be clocked at 3.5GHz.
Apart from the Athlon II X2 275, the second and third quarters of 2011 will also mark the introduction of the Athlon II X3 460, Athlon II X4 650, Phenom II X4 850, Phenom II X2 570 Black Edition and the Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPUs. (via CPU World)