<br /> <!-- google_ad_section_start --> <div id="intelliTxt"><span class="content"><blockquote> <p><font size="2">&ldquo;AMD in many cases delivers greater performance than the similarly priced Intel CPUs, but not nearly a large enough performance gap to make up for the difference in die size. Again, great for consumers, but potentially painful for AMD in the long run. As yields improve AMD should be able to make more of these cores members of the 900 family, but without a separate, smaller die there will still be economic inefficiencies at the lower end.&rdquo;</font></p> <p><font size="2">&ldquo;AMD&rsquo;s Phenom II is very competitive, but the strategy does not have much long term staying power. AMD needs to introduce smaller die versions of its CPUs soon.&rdquo;</font></p> </blockquote> <p><font size="2">Ask and you shall receive, right?</font></p> <p><font size="2">Intel did a bang up job tarnishing the Pentium name with its clock speed rampage during the Pentium 4 days, but the Athlon brand still holds a special place in our hearts.<br /> </font><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">The Athlon II X2, to be specific, is a 45nm monolithic dual-core processor.&nbsp;</font><strong><font size="2">While the most recent Athlon X2s are derivatives of the original Phenom architecture, the Athlon II is based on the new and improved Phenom II architecture.<br /> </font></strong><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">Take two Phenom II cores, increase their L2 caches to 1MB, leave out the L3 and you&rsquo;ve got an Athlon II.&nbsp; The entire die measures only 117.5 mm^2 and is made up of a meager 234 million transistors.</font></span></span></p> <p><font size="2">The new Athlon II is actually AMD&rsquo;s smallest dual core processor ever, even smaller than the original Athlon 64 X2.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s also AMD&rsquo;s first 45nm dual-core processor.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s also AMD&rsquo;s first Socket-AM3 processor to carry the Athlon brand (ok, I&rsquo;ll stop).&nbsp; As an AM3 chip it will work in both AM3 and AM2+ motherboards, just like the Phenom II.</font></p> <p><font size="2">The Athlon II is only launching with one model today the 3.0GHz Athlon II X2 250.&nbsp; Priced at $87, it&rsquo;s likely that we won&rsquo;t see more Athlon II X2s until AMD is ready to further switch its lineup over to 45nm in order to keep up with demand.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3572">Read more...</a></font></p> </span></div>