Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Quietly last night, AMD went ahead and slashed prices on existing Phenom II and Athlon II processors, discontinuing a handful of chips in the process. In addition, the company publicly introduced a handful of new Athlon II CPUs, including low-power and triple-core models.
The company’s official price list still says “Effective September 16,” but it’s changed quite a bit since then. Here’s what’s left of AMD’s previous desktop CPU lineup:
Processor | Cores | Speed | L2 cache | L3 cache | TDP | Old price | New price |
Phenom II X4 965 BE | 4 | 3.4GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 140W | $245 | $195 |
Phenom II X4 955 BE | 4 | 3.2GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 125W | $245 | $175 |
Phenom II X4 945 | 4 | 3.0GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 95W | $225 | $165 |
Phenom II X4 905e | 4 | 2.5GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 65W | $175 | $175 |
Phenom II X3 705e | 3 | 2.5GHz | 1.5MB | 6MB | 65W | $125 | $125 |
Athlon II X4 630 | 4 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | – | 95W | $122 | $122 |
Athlon II X4 620 | 4 | 2.6GHz | 2MB | – | 95W | $99 | $99 |
Athlon II X2 250 | 2 | 3.0GHz | 2MB | – | 65W | $87 | $69 |
Athlon II X2 245 | 2 | 2.9GHz | 2MB | – | 65W | $66 | $64 |
Athlon II X2 240 | 2 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | – | 65W | $60 | $60 |
Sempron 140 | 1 | 2.7GHz | 512KB | – | 45W | $36 | $36 |
That’s right—no more Phenom II X4 810, Phenom II X3 720, or Phenom II X2 550. No more Socket AM2+ Phenom IIs. No more processors priced higher than $200, either—you can credit the arrival of Intel’s Core i5 and i7-800 processors for that. That said, we grabbed the “old” prices in the table above from Google’s cache of the price list, but actual e-tail prices were already a little bit lower before this latest round of cuts.
What about those new Athlon IIs? Here they are:
Processor | Cores | Speed | L2 cache | L3 cache | TDP | Old price | New price |
Athlon II X4 605e | 4 | 2.3GHz | 2MB | – | 45W | – | $143 |
Athlon II X4 600e | 4 | 2.2GHz | 2MB | – | 45W | – | $133 |
Athlon II X3 435 | 3 | 2.9GHz | 1.5MB | – | 95W | – | $87 |
Athlon II X3 425 | 3 | 2.7GHz | 1.5MB | – | 95W | – | $76 |
Athlon II X3 405e | 3 | 2.3GHz | 1.5MB | – | 45W | – | $102 |
Athlon II X3 400e | 3 | 2.2GHz | 1.5MB | – | 45W | – | $97 |
Athlon II X2 240e | 2 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | – | 45W | – | $77 |
Athlon II X2 235e | 2 | 2.7GHz | 2MB | – | 45W | – | $69 |
The low-power “e” chips might not be too terribly exciting, but the Athlon II X3 435 and 425 are a different story: they have three cores, relatively high clock speeds, and price tags well under $100. Heck, the slowest one is only $7 more than AMD’s fastest dual-core Athlon II.
If you count the Athlon II X4 620, which has weathered this storm without budging from its $99 notch on the price ladder, AMD now offers three sub-$100 processors with more than two cores. Intel offers none—and probably won’t for the foreseeable future. Clarkdale, which may come out in early January, will have two cores with Hyper-Threading capabilities, however.