Athlon 64 X2 6400 Leak

Chipmaker is planning to release one more speed grade of the Athlon 64 X2 before it retires to be replaced by the Phenom, say mainboard designers in Taiwan. Though the company had largely intended to finish with the 6000+ model rated at 3GHz, the advent of Intel's E6850 Core 2 Duo at the same clock rate has forced AMD to introduce a stopgap model while it waits on its new technology, the sources claim. The 6400+ would be clocked at 3.2GHz and ship with a full 2MB of level 2 cache split between the two cores.

Though the price of the new Athlon is expected to dip somewhat below the E6850 and sell for between $220 and $248 in large batches, its performance may also match the cost difference and run 10-15 percent slower than Intel's offering. AMD has declined commenting on the new chip or its release information, though reports have the processor shipping soon with only a small update required for mainboards to fully recognize the extra speed.

By Electronista Staff