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back to article AMD spins dual-core Phenom Cartwheel

AMD has unveiled two new dual-core Athlons intended for low-cost home PCs. On Monday, the beleaguered chip manufacturer rolled out what it's calling the 2.5GHz Athlon X2 7550 and the 2.7GHz Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition. Previously, dual-core Athlons used AMD's aging K8 microprocessor design, but these chips benefit from the …

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  1. Dave
    Stop

    The great chip shop dichotomy

    I hear that these are in fact 4 core chips with 2 defunct cores turned off.

    So effectively a Phenom X4^h3^h2

    Is this down to yield being poor? or is this AMD trying to get rid of old 65nm parts before they introduce 4 core 45nm chips?

    Either way, I think this shows how the chip manufactures are now serving the general PC user as a secondary concern.

    It's pretty easy to see by looking at the metrics that the general public would get more benefit from a purpose designed higher speed 2 core chip (e.g. the now somewhat dated Core 2 Duo).

    Meanwhile, the chip giants seem intent on forcing reduced cache multi core server parts at us whilst sidestepping questions about who really needs 8 concurrently executing threads.

    Up until now, the majority of people buying new chips that are faster than their previous system. Soon though, Core 2 Duo users running at >3Ghz are going to be looking for a new I7 system and finding that they will have to pay upwards of 1k$ for the CPU just to get processor parity for single or dual threaded operation.

    Will you pay for that?

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  2. Spencer Davies
    IT Angle

    Interesting

    My family is pretty much split down the line when it comes to what powers it with the processor..mine is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Black Edition whilst my parents is a Celeron Dual Core (Core 2 chip, but with lower cache and the Celeron name"

    I will be upgrading to a phenom at some stage next year, So i will be very interested to see how this pans out.

    AMD need something to get back into the market.

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  3. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Boffin

    Smart move?

    Face it, everyone is happilly saving themselves into a recession, not many people are spalshing out on killer home systems, so having a budget part that still offers excellent perfromance for 95% of home users is a good thing, and if it uses up otherwise defunct chips then it saves money for AMD as well. If I was AMD, my worry would be that this may take sales from the newer CPUs as cash-strapped punters look for a bargain option

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