AMD Athlon XP 2600+ processor we told you about in early Summer 2003 (see this and this news-stories) emerged for sale during the weekend in Japan. This is the third version of the Athlon XP 2600+ CPU available in the market, it is clocked at only 1917MHz, but is equipped with 512KB of L2 cache.

So far there have been two different AMD Athlon XP 2600+ chips based on the Thoroughbred core – clocked at 2133MHz with 266MHz FSB and functioning at 2083MHz with 333MHz bus – both with 256KB of L2 cache. The today’s newcomer does not feature really high core-clock, but has 512KB of L2 and 333MHz EV-6 FSB. The new AMD Athlon XP 2600+ is made using 0.13 micron technology, utilizes 1.65V VCore, and consumes up to 68.30W of power.

The retail price of the new Athlon 2600+ is from $105 to $115, whereas the cost of manufacturing such chips should be a bit lower compared to the original Thoroughbred core based CPUs. AMD badly needs to lower the cost of its chips in order to sustain its profit margin when selling Athlon XP 32-bit microprocessors at Intel Celeron’s price point.

The new Athlon XP 2600+ powered by Barton may become a very good overclocker, just like the AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor since the difference between core-clocks of the mentioned chips is less than 100MHz. Considering the fact that the vast majority of Athlon XP processors still comes with unlocked multiplier, overclockers should definitely keep an eye on the new 2600+ CPUs.