AMD 2.3GHz Athlon 6500 Kuma

Amd "Kuma" processor we've all been waiting for has finally arrived as the latest edition to the "Stars" family: the 2.3GHz Athlon 6500. Expreview, who recently got their hands on one of the chips, is touting it to be AMD's "best dual core ever" after a benchmark test where it ranked highest in overall performance against the Brisbane 2.6MHz and 2.3MHz Athlon64 X2 5000+. The Kuma also held its own with overclocking, easily reaching 3GHz at default voltage, and hitting 3.4GHz with a voltage increase. A 20W higher power consumption was noted as the primary con, with conjectures that it might be an "Agena with two cores disabled." The 65nm chip offers HT3.0 support, DDR2-1066 support via an integrated controller, Cool'n'Quiet 2.0, a shared 2MB L3 cache, includes SSE4A support, and will retail for around $110 when it hits store shelves.

From our test result, you can see lots of improvements have been done compare to Brisbane core. Take benchmark tool PCMark Vantage as an example, we've experienced about 8% in total score increase. You can see more improvement in real game and video transcode software: a same MPG video clip transcode, Kuma only used 1min 37sec, but Brisbane need 2min 26sec to finish the job, very impressive.

In other words, Kuma is more better than other AMD dual core, not only the basic performance, the overclocking and memory ratio adjustment are also proved that the CPU is AMD's advancement in dual core arena.

Power consumption is one of con of Kuma. We don't know if Kuma is a Agena with two cores disabled, but it really feels like. In default clock Athlon 6500 is 300MHz lower than Athlon64 X2 5000+, but power consumption is 20W higher no matter idle or active.

It is still unclear that AMD will position the Kuma on which level. Till now we didn't see the product hit local market massively, only some E-tailers listed the Kuma CPU Athlon 6500. So if you got any info about the CPU's availability, please leave a comment here.


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AMD taking on Atom with Athlon !

Another week, another AMD leak about taking it directly to Intel's minimalist Atom. No, not with Bobcat, but with the new Athlon Ultra-Value Client (UVC) series. AMD is targeting the 230 with its 2650e, a single-core 1.6 GHz chip, and the 330 with its 3250e dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. Both have 512KB of cache per-core, matching the competition, but are rated at 15- and 22-watts respectively, much higher than the Atom's miserly 4-watts. It's unclear if that rating is current for just the CPU or the matching 740 chipset as well, but given the fact that AMD's Athlon 64 2000+ is already quite frugal we wouldn't be surprised if it were for the package. There's no mention of price, and right now these chips are just for desktop OEMs, but laptop versions are said to be in the works and could be quite popular amongst the netbook crowd -- if they're cheap enough. 1.2GHz of Turon can do wonders, and we're hoping for even better from 1.6.

That's netbooks and nettops taken care of - what about mobile internet devices (MIDs), also a target of Atom? Well will the MID platform thus far failing to catch buyers' attention the way that SCCs have, there's no great rush to release. However, AMD is expected to announce its 'Bobcat' chip in the near future, and that's thought to be aimed at MIDs.

AMD launches ‘business class’ Phenom, Athlon chips

AMD on Monday announced “business class” versions of its Phenom and Athlon processors for the commercial markets. The big pitch: PC manufacturers will maintain AMD’s business class systems for 24 months to ensure that systems aren’t phased out before they are deployed.

The chipmaker (all AMD resources) is angling to differentiate itself from Intel in the commercial markets and says that stability of platform is important to public sector purchases as well as enterprises.

Hal Speed, AMD’s marketing architect, said that ensuring longevity of supply is critical for desktop deployments because sometimes the life of the PC cycle can undercut the time to deploy them. Speed also noted that AMD upped its warranty from one year to three years for its business class systems. “We were looking to remove complexity,” said Speed. “IT departments don’t like change.”

AMD is looking to assure corporate buyers that its systems will have some longevity to accommodate longer PC buying cycles. Since these systems have up to a 24 month lifecycle companies won’t have to change disk images of their desktops.

Among other components of AMD’s business class effort:

• Phenom X3 triple-core and X4 quad-core processors are featured as well as X2 dual-core processors.
• OEMs can choose AMD 780V chipsets, ATI Radeon HD 3000 graphics or non-AMD graphics and chipsets.
• AMD is introducing five new motherboards for system builders that will have at least 18 months longevity.
• Business class commercial notebooks will be available in the second half.

As for OEM support, HP will have its HP Compaq dc5850 Business PC available Monday. Dell will use AMD’s business class chips in its Optiplex 740 systems and Lenovo and Fujitsu are also on board.

It’s unclear whether this business class effort will make a difference. For instance, if you were initiating a PC upgrade cycle today AMD’s 24 months of stability would be a selling point. However, there are diminishing returns after a year.

source:http://blogs.zdnet.com/