AMD Hits the Jackpot with Industry's First US$99 Quad-Core Processor

Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices has announced today the expansion of its line of Athlon II processors, with the introduction of two new models, the Athlon II X4 620 and Athlon II X4 630, both of which have been designed for the mainstream market and take advantage of the chip maker's energy-efficient 45nm processing technology. One of the main features of the new processors is that they have been designed to provide an affordable alternative to a quad-core-enabled desktop PC. The Athlon II X4 620 model is the first x86 quad-core processor that comes with a price tag of just US$99.

 

“Our goal is to deliver a great computing experience and maximize value for our customers,” said John Cook, vice president of marketing, global PC business, HP. “The new AMD quad-core processors offer the right balance between excellent performance and price, and allow HP to continue to be a best-in-class provider of consumer technology.”

 

As far as technical specifications go, the Athlon II X4 620 is designed to provide customers with a quad-core design, boasting a 2.6GHz factory-set clock speed, a TDP of 95W and a 45nm manufacturing process. Additional features include the 512KB of L1 cache and 2MB of L2 cache, a HyperTransport 3.0 speed of 4000GT/s, socket AM3 compatibility and support for dual-channel DDR3 memory configurations. The Athlon II X4 630 is a step up from the US$99-priced model, boasting a core speed of 2.8GHz and an 8x clock multiplier (compared to 7x on the 620), all for an estimated US$122.

 

At its price point, the Athlon II X4 620 processor model appears to be a wise choice for computer users who are looking to build themselves a new desktop PC that comes at a competitive price/performance ratio. According to some of the early benchmarks that have already been published on the Internet, AMD has managed to roll out a highly competitive product in the mainstream sector, as the performance of the Athlon II X4 620 CPU is close to that of Intel's cheapest quad-core, the Core 2 Quad Q8200 model. The fellows over at Anandtech, Hot Hardware and Tom's Hardware are among the first to publish the results of the benchmarks, providing some insight on what to expect from AMD's latest offering.