Advanced Micro Devices’ Athlon 64 X2 chips with two processing engines have finally started to emerge for sale. During the weekend several stores in Tokyo, Japan, began to sell AMD Athlon 64 X2 models 4200+, 4600+ and 4800+, but in quantities not sufficient to satisfy all demanding customers.

According to a report from Akiba PC Hotline, AMD Athlon 64 X2 model 4200+ costs from $606 to $609, whereas 4600+ is priced in the range of $910 – $919. The top chip of the lineup – AMD Athlon 64 X2 – is available in some places in Tokyo, Japan for approximately $1135. Despite of pretty high prices on the dual-core chips from AMD, the majority of stores have sold out the microprocessors.

Sunnyvale, California-based AMD announced the Athlon 64 X2 product line on the 31^st of May, 2005. AMD usually declares availability of the processors when it is ready to ship them for revenue, which means that actual end-users would be able to buy the actual product a number of weeks after such announcement.

At press time some stores in the USA offered to pre-order AMD Athlon 64 X2 central processing units. Some wrote that the chips will actually be available in early July, 2005.

AMD’s desktop and desktop replacement notebooks-oriented Athlon 64 X2 central processing units (CPUs) operate at 2.20 – 2.40GHz and are equipped with 1MB or 2MB cache memory. The chips have special arbitration logic to balance the workflow called System Request Interface (SRI) as well as built-in PC3200 DDR memory controller.

AMD’s dual-core processors for desktops are expected to be able to operate within existing Socket 939 and Socket 940 infrastructures provided that the mainboards have BIOS support for them and comply to AMD’s thermal and voltage specifications for all processors made using 90nm process technology.