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AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 to launch this month

939-pin version to follow in May

AMD will launch the much-anticipated Athlon 64 FX-53 this month, according to purported company roadmaps posted on the Net.

The 2.4GHz, 940-pin gaming-oriented part will be followed by a 939-pin version on May, which will be accompanied by two the 939-pin 64-bit AMD chips, the Athlon 64 3500+ and the 3800+, clocked at 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz, respectively, and both equipped with 512KB of L2 cache. The 939-pin versions support unbuffered SDRAM, while the 940-pin chips required registered DIMMs.

The Athlon 64 3700+ will appear sooner: in April, Anandtech claims. It too is clocked at 2.4GHz and features 1MB of cache. It's based on the original Athlon 64 architecture - presumably the 3800+, which has the same clock speed, but a smaller cache and yet higher performance, is based on the updated 130nm 'Newcastle' core. Typically, you'd expect the lower cache size to reduce the overall performance rating. The 3700+ is a 754-pin part.

The roadmap also indicates AMD will offer a 2800+ 754-pin Athlon 64 by the end of March.

Beyond that, we're looking at a 2.6GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 FX-55 possibly later this year, though it lacks even a broad timeframe for release. Not so the 939-pin Athlon 64 4000+, also clocked at 2.6GHz, which is scheduled for a Q1 2005 release. The 2.8GHz 4200+ is earmarked for H1 2005 availability.

Given the timeframe, we'd expect these two to be 90nm 'Winchester' parts, but since AMD has reiterated its plan to ship 90nm chips during H2 2004, these may simply be bringing the old 130nm lines to an end. Hopefully, the 90nm chips will clock higher than that.

If not, then the leaked roadmap is at odds with AMD's public roadmap, suggesting that it is focusing its 90nm efforts on Opteron, with the Athlon 64 versions pushed back into 2005.

The leak also lists three new Athlon XPs - 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ - due to ship in Q3 2004, Q4 2004 and Q1 2005, respectively. All three will contain 256KB of L2 cache. Again, the timing suggests these are the Athlon 64-derived XPs codenamed 'Paris', due during the second half of this year, according to AMD's public roadmap. ®

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