Advanced Micro Devices has quietly added dual-core AMD Opteron processors with boosted clock-speeds into the lineup less than two weeks before introducing its quad-core Opteron chips. The new central processing units belong to the so-called “Special Edition” (SE) family of chips that has higher power consumption compared to typical AMD Opteron processors, but also offer a bit higher performance.

The new chips that AMD made available on Thursday are AMD Opteron processors 8224 SE and 2224 SE that operate at 3.20GHz, have thermal design power (TDP) 120W and are intended for multi-processor (MP) and dual-processor (DP) machines, respectively. In addition, AMD introduced models 8222, 2222 and 1222 that operate at 3.0GHz, but have mainstream 95W and 103W TDP.

The new chips from AMD are immediately available from AMD solution provider partners around the world. In 1000-unit quantities AMD charges $873 for the model 2224 SE, whereas the model 8224 SE costs $2149.

The new SE chips are intended for customers who want the absolutely highest dual-core performance and has no plans to wait before AMD makes available high-speed quad-core AMD Opteron processors later during the year. It highly unlikely though that there will be a lot of those planning to deploy a high-performance mission critical systems based on the new dual-core AMD Opteron SE chips.

The fresh breed of AMD Opteron dual-core processors are likely to become the last dual-core server chips from AMD that are made for performance improvements purposes. When quad-core microprocessors based on AMD’s next-generation micro-architecture become available later this year, the world’s second largest maker of x86 central processing units is likely to concentrate on making dual-core chips much more efficient in terms of power consumption.

AMD plans to launch its first quad-core AMD Opteron products in early September and update the family with higher-speed versions later during the year.