BIOS: Technology Means Business

AMD has today announced the availability of the Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor, the company’s fastest desktop processor to date. Promising to provide exceptional PC performance on games, digital media and intense applications, the CPU will allow enthusiasts to experience the next generation of multi-core supported games and applications.

Last April, when AMD first introduced dual-core versions of its Athlon 64 processors, known as the X2 line, it used single-core designs for its top-of-the-line FX brand. But with gaming companies starting to tweak their games to take advantage of dual-core technology, the time has come for the dual-core FX-60.

As requirements for high performance in PC games and digital media content continue to escalate, AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor takes its place as the highest performing dual-core consumer processor from AMD, and shows an average 34 per cent improvement on overall digital media performance and an eye-popping 80 per cent faster performance on certain benchmarks over similar single-core processors, claims the company.

‘As more and more games and applications support multi-core environments, PC enthusiasts can experience the true advantages delivered by the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor,’ said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president, Desktop Division, Microprocessor Solutions Sector, AMD.

Chip companies are moving to dual-core designs in part to alleviate the heat problems caused by running single-core chips at ever faster frequencies to improve performance. The combination of two slightly slower processor cores can get more work done overall than one fast core, but single-threaded applications such as most games are unable to take advantage of both cores.

If no changes other than clock speed are made to the chip, single-threaded applications will perform worse on slower dual-core chips compared to faster single-core processors. To truly make the most of dual-core chips, games need to be designed from the start for that type of processor, but such development efforts are under way at many game development studios. Some companies have already released dual-core patches for the most popular games.

Having said that, AMD claims that single-core games will see an increase in performance with the dual-core 2.6GHz FX-60 as compared to the single-core 2.8GHz FX-57 processor. The FX-57 came with 1MB of Level 2 cache, but the FX-60 features 1MB of Level 2 cache dedicated to each core. Cache memory stores frequently used data close to the CPU (central processing unit), where it can be accessed more quickly than data stored in memory.

‘Those who crave ultimate performance on 3D games and intense digital media applications can experience realistic physics and lighting, advanced artificial intelligence and amazing performance on digital media applications with the first dual-core AMD Athlon 64 FX processor. The AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor is designed to deliver the ultimate in performance for our customers who demand nothing short of the best.’

The AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor is available immediately worldwide. The AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor is priced at $1031 in 1,000-unit PIB quantities. Systems based on the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor are expected to be available from the following companies worldwide: Evesham, Mesh, ABS, Alienware, CyberPower, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, iBuyPower (AFT), Might Micro, Mighty Micro, Monarch, Overdrive PC, Polywell, Velocity Micro, Voodoo PC, XI Computer, Zipzoomfly, and ZT Group.

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