Athlon 64 X2

As we said, Athlon 64 X2 is the new Athlon 64 with dual core technology. On Figure 2 you take a look on its design, which is the same as the current Athlon 64 processors with the difference of having two cores. This CPU uses the socket 939 platform and all socket 939 motherboards that provide 1.4 V CPU voltage are capable of accepting this new CPU (a BIOS update may be necessary). Since it is based on the socket 939 platform this CPU has DDR Dual Channel memory support.

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Figure 2: Athlon 62 X2 main specs.

The announced models were the following.

Model	Frequency	L2 Memory Cache	Pricing*
4800+	2.4 GHz	1 MB + 1 MB	USD 1,001
4600+	2.4 GHz	512 KB + 512 KB	USD 803
4400+	2.2 GHz	1 MB + 1 MB	USD 581
4200+	2.2 GHz	512 KB + 512 KB	USD 537

* Prices for distributors in the USA in 1,000 quantities.

Basically two clock rates and two cache versions.

It is really amazing how expensive is the 4800+ compared to the 4400+ – it costs almost the double –, which are basically the same processor but 200 MHz faster. Also, by this table we can see how AMD is still facing troubles reaching high clock rates. While Intel is over 3.6 GHz range on desktop market, AMD is still stuck at 2.4 GHz.

AMD didn't provide any performance comparison, but just a comparision between Athlon 64 X2's technology to Pentium D's (Pentium D is the commercial name of Pentium 4 with dual core technology), as you see on Figure 3.

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Figure 3: Athlon 64 X2 vs. Pentium D.

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