AMD is lining up several low-power variants of its quad-core Phenom and dual-core Athlon CPUs to launch late this quarter or early in the second quarter of 2008. The low-power Phenom 9100e is scheduled for release in February or March this year and will come with a core frequency of 1.8GHz, DDR2 1066 memory controller and TDP of 65W. At the beginning of the second quarter, AMD will phase out the 9100e and launch the 9150e, according to sources at motherboard makers, which offers the same specifications. The differences between the 9100e and 9150e are unclear at this time although most likely is that 9150e is based on the B3 stepping revision.
In addition to the 9100e and 9150e, the company will also launch three dual-core low-power CPUs: Athlon 4850e (2.5GHz, 1MB L2 cache and DDR2 800), Athlon 4450e (2.3GHz, 1MB L2 cache and DDR2 800) and Athlon 4050e (2.1GHz, 1MB L2 cache and DDR 800). In other news, AMD is also set to launch two 45W single-core CPUs: Athlon BE-1640 with a core frequency of 2.7GHz and L2 cache of 512KB later this month, and will follow with the Athlon BE-1660 (2.8GHz, 512KB) in the second quarter.
With low-power versions of AMD's next-generation CPU architecture showing up, the company will begin to phase out some previous CPUs including the dual-core Athlon X2 BE-2400, BE-2350 and BE-2300, and single-core Athlon BE-1620, Athlon 64 4000+ and 3800+. AMD will announce final order dates in the second quarter this year, noted the sources. AMD did not respond for comment by the time of publication.
News source: Digitimes
It's win-win either way
Fat lot of good that does them: as far as desktops go, I'm no longer recommending dual-core (not even Intel's) at all. Despite quad-core being still almost undeniably overkill and how cheap basic dual-core processors have gotten, quad-cores in general, and both Phenom and Core2Quad entry-level models in particular, cost too little and offer too much bang for the buck to be disregarded. With 2 GB of RAM and an existing Intel (or AMD, for that matter) quad-core (even the Phenom 9500 or Q6600), your processing needs are completely covered for at least the next year (if not the next two years) for less than $2,000USD starting entirely from scratch. Not since the Pentium III (if not even further back) has so much bang been available for so little buck.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103226 (Entry-level Phenom)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017 (Entry-level Kentsfield)
Both processors are retail-boxed models.
With quad-core being *that cheap*, why settle for less?
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