Amd Athlon X4 950 Quad Core

AMD quad-core debuts Baronial, but only at 2GHz

AMD hopes to ship faster quad-core chips afterward in the year

AMD 's long awaited quad-cadre CPU will finally announced in August with a maximum clockspeed of just 2GHz. That's the official - and frankly rather disappointing - news following an official AMD announcement.

Codenamed Barcelona and also known every bit the K10 architecture, AMD's offset quad-core CPU will initially be sold under the Opteron brand for use in servers and workstation PCs. The fries are drop-in compatible with existing current-generation Opteron motherboards, while regular desktop fries based on the K10 core are expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2008.

AMD does hope to ship faster Barcelona chips later in 2007. According to the announcement, "AMD expects its native quad-core processors to scale to higher frequencies in Q407 in both standard and SE (Special Edition) versions."

Earlier this year, leaked route maps for Barcelona indicated that AMD had hoped to launch the crucial new CPU at effectually ii.5GHz. For at present, AMD is claiming that the disappointing launch frequency is a effect of a conclusion to focus on power efficiency, often referred to as performance-per-watt.

Co-ordinate to senor AMD operative Randy Allen, "AMD has prioritised production of our depression power and standard power products considering our customers and ecosystem demand it. And nosotros firmly believe that the introduction of our native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor will evangelize on the promise of the highest levels of performance-per-watt the industry has e'er seen."

That may well be truthful. Simply there's also little doubting AMD would dearly like to ship Barcelona at speeds well in excess of 2GHz.

Full technical specifications for the K10 architecture have nonetheless to exist released. But AMD has revealed the flake volition boast much improved floating indicate and SSE performance. An upgraded memory controller and faster HyperTransport links will exist among other detail enhancements.

Yet, K10 is not thought to be a major departure from the existing K8 Athlon and Opteron cores. Hence, it's hard to imagine it being anymore than reasonably competitive with Intel'southward quad-core processors on a cadre-for-core and clock-for-clock ground.

Just with a maximum speed of 2GHz, the start Barcelona chips will lag Intel'south quad-core processors by a massive 1GHz. It's thought AMD plans to launch its first quad-core desktop chips at around two.6GHz. By the time they are launched early next twelvemonth, Intel could well be shipping 45nm Core 2 Quad chips at well over 3GHz.

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