The moment many of us have been waiting for has just come: AMD Athlon 64 processors are now available in retail! The first 64-bit AMD Athlon CPUs today reached the shelves in Tokyo stores, more than a week before the planned date of their appearance!

As estimated, AMD’s Athlon 64 3200+ for Socket 754 with single-channel PC3200 memory controller, 1MB L2 cache and 128KB of L1 cache costs a bit less than $500 – roughly $475. The CPUs were made on the 30^th week of the year 2003 and are clocked at 2.0GHz, according to an Akiba report. In case such frequency could be achieved in production quantities back in late July, products with higher - 2.20GHz – core-clock should be definitely available by the end of September.

It definitely worth pointing out that MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R mainboards and coolers for AMD Athlon 64 CPUs are also available in Japan. Hence, lucky Japanese are in position to build up fully functional AMD Athlon 64-based systems.

OPN of the just appeared AMD64 processor for desktops is ADA3200AEP5AP, the VCore of the chip produced using 0.13 micron fabrication process is 1.55V.