Nearly a month ago we reported that AMD plans to roll-out another core for its Athlon XP processors, the Thorton with 256KB of L2 cache (See March 24, 2003 news-story). At that time nothing was known about the newcomer, but we supposed that this is just the same Barton, but with 256KB of L2 instead of 512KB. 

Well, today we found that ABIT’s NF7-S BIOS already supports AMD Thorton processors and even detects the right model-number for the parts. Apparently, Thorton 2600+ CPU is clocked at 2075MHz (166MHz x12.5), just like the Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” 2600+ CPU for 333MHz EV-6 bus.

AMD also confirmed its ability to disable a half of Barton's 512KB L2 cache.

Unofficial sources originally said that the Thorton chips will be sold under Duron brand-name, however, with 333MHz PSB and 256KB of L2 cache the new processors will more resemble Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” CPUs rather than good-old Duron chips which stopped to develop more than a year ago. Furthermore, the Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processors are still afloat and higher-end models, such as 2600+, 2700+ and 2800+ cost $151, $180 and $225 respectively, whereas prices on Duron chips hardly ever exceeded $100 mark per unit. I seriously doubt that AMD is ready to offer its 2600+ processors for below $100, sacrificing its ASPs and gross-margins in the near future, hence, it looks like Thorton will be sold as middle-end and lower-end Athlon XP CPUs, rather than as Duron chips. It definitely also depends on the time when such processors are rolled-out on the market, since when Intel unleashes its Celeron 2.50, 2.60 as well as 2.70GHz later this year, AMD will have nothing else but to sell what it has with appropriate speeds for about $100, as a result, there will be no difference whether these will be Athlon XP or Duron chips. While if AMD unleashes the new chips in May, it will be logical to sell them under widely-known Athlon XP brand-name.