AMD unveils new Athlon chips

AMD unveiled desktop chips on Tuesday based on its AM2 socket, setting the stage for future products based on a new architecture.

The new chips include the Athlon 64 FX-62, which becomes AMD's highest-performance desktop chip, and the Athlon 64 X2 5000+, the new leader of AMD's mainstream desktop segment. The chips add support for the faster DDR2 memory standard and virtualisation technology.

AMD has already said that it doesn't expect a huge performance gain from the move to DDR2 memory. The chipmaker is making modest advances to its chip-design strategy this year as it gets ready for chips in 2007 based on a new architecture that will use four processing cores and faster Hypertransport interconnects.

Companies shipping PCs based on the new processors include Alienware, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and Lenovo. The FX-62 processor costs $1,031, while the X2 5000+ processor costs $696, in quantities of 1,000 units. More details are available on AMD's Web site.

AMD is releasing the chips about two months before Intel plans to launch Conroe, a desktop processor based on its Core architecture. Conroe is expected to be a major improvement over Intel's current desktop processors. AMD plans to reveal more details about its strategy for combating Conroe at a meeting next week for analysts.