14 DAY TRIAL // The PC world loves competitions and head banging against the walls of performance and price, even more so at the very high end of the hardware spectrum. Every time a company launches a new processor, memory module, video card or whatever other piece of hardware you may think of, users gather around, observing benchmarks, making endurance tests, comparing the new arrival's performance, price and features with other similar products.
For the users, this process is more than simple fun, it allows them to pick the best hardware for their needs and money. From the producing company?s point of view it is a much more serious situation, as a good selling product may mean climbing the ladder of popularity and success, while the failure to please customers may easily spell the doom of that particular company.
On the CPU side, there are only two companies worth mentioning: the giant Intel, and the much smaller AMD. Nowadays, Intel is doing great, its processors are widely accepted as the very best current technologies have to offer and its profits mount up, as does its popularity among users. At the other side, AMD is still struggling against the tide and now it tries to gain some foothold on the high level hardware market with the upcoming Athlon X2 6400+ and Barcelona cores. The Athlon X2 6400+ will be the last of the processors shipped under the name Athlon and it is hoped that it will manage to keep a fair market share until enough Phenoms (quad cored processor family that should replace the old dual and single cored one) can be built and shipped.
With a price tag on most desktop processors (both Intel and AMD alike) around the $200 mark, the new Athlon X2 6400+ will too have to be priced at a reasonable level (some sources indicate about $224). The new Athlon will be built using the 90 nm technology and will feature two cores running at 3.2GHz (finally AMD really breaks the 3GHz barrier) and 2MB level 2 cache. In order to be used on most AMD compatible motherboards, this Athlon will require a BIOS update.