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AMD's "Black Box" Athlon 64 X2 6400+
MojoKid writes "Rumors of a new high-end AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip circulated in July, but availability and specifics of the chip were unconfirmed at the time. Now AMD has officially taken the wraps off their new Athlon 64 X2 6400+, a 3.2GHz dual-core chipset to compete with Intel's Core 2 E6750 and E6850 series. HotHardware notes that the new 6400+ is still built on AMD's 90nm fab process and has a single 2-GHz HyperTransport link and 2 MB of on-chip L2 cache (1 MB per core), just like its predecessor the 6000+. The new processor is said to be a 'channel only' offering and will retail at $239 or so, in a black retail box (picture here) without a heatsink."
What a bargain! Why didn't they just wait till 65nm? The same chip would probably fit in the 90W or less envelope at that size.
Personally, I'm happy with my E6600, which bangs along just fine at 2.4GHz and can easily outperform any Athlon at a similar speed [or at least match it].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
$239 is at 1000 or more quantity. so it's wholesale pricing.
Newegg will probably retail it at $350 to $390 IF they buy a thousand of them. Most companies dont want to stock that much of a processor as the price drops so fat you are stuck with overpriced stock on hand.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.