Commodore USA prices up revived C64, VICs

Not the games machine its father was

It's official: the new Commodore 64 - well, new innards, old casing - is a nettop.

Commodore USA, the latest in a long line of CBM revialist movements over the years since the original company went bust, has revealed the machine will be based around a 1.83GHz Intel Atom D525 with 2-4GB of 800MHz DDR 2 memory.

Yes, the D525 is dual-core, but it's not the Core i-something that many folk were hoping for. It does at least use Nvidia's Ion 2 chipset platform, so it should perform as well as a nettop can perform.

But, alas, it's not the games machine its namesake was.

Prices range from $250 (£153) for a barebones - casing, keyboard and mobo - to $895 (£548) for a fully specced model with 1TB of storage, 8GB of memory, built-on 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and a Blu-ray drive.

There's $51-183 (£31-112) postage to the UK on top of that, depending on how quickly you want your C64 shipped.

The VIC-Pro...

For a speedier CPU, you'll need the newly renamed VIC-Pro - formerly the Commodore Phoenix - which has a choice of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs, all with integrated graphics. Prices run from $495 to $1195 (£303-732).

Or there's the new VIC-Slim, which has essentially the same spec as the C64, but comes in a new casing that, like the VIC-Pro, is more Amiga than VIC-20 so has far less nostalgia value.

...and the VIC-Slim, neither a spit for the VIC-20

More details on all these models at the Commodore USA website. ®