Mainboard manufacturer Gigabyte Technology has reveled clock-speeds of Advanced Micro Devices’ forthcoming Phenom II X6 “Thuban” central processing units (CPUs). As expected, AMD’s six-core chips will feature substantially lower clock-speeds than their quad-core brethren.

According to the description of Gigabyte’s BIOS update for GA-790XT-USB3 motherboard, AMD Phenom II X6 1035T and 1055T will operate at 2.60GHz and 2.80GHz, respectively. Based on those clock-speeds, it is possible to estimate clock-speeds of other chips in the “Thuban” family: 3.0GHz for 1075T and 3.20GHz for the 10xxT chip due to be out in Q3 2010.

At present the highest-performance quad-core microprocessors from AMD operate at clock-speeds of up to 3.40GHz, which means that in certain cases such chips may offer higher performance compared to six-core CPUs. Nevertheless, AMD plans to implement dynamic acceleration technology that can accelerate certain cores when they are needed while slowing down the unneeded cores to maintain the thermal design power (TDP).

AMD will position its Phenom II X6 processors for those, who demand “massive performance headroom”, however, given the relatively low clock-speed of many-core CPUs, actual market success of the chips will be determined by their ability to dynamically accelerate themselves at the times when performance is needed the most.

It is noteworthy that Intel Corp.’s six-core Core i7-980X processor works at the same frequency as the quad-core Core i7-975 Extreme Edition product – 3.33GHz – and maintains the same the same TDP thanks to thinner process technology that is used to make it (32nm vs. 45nm). By contrast, AMD uses proven 45nm SOI fabrication process to make its Phenom II X6 “Thuban” chips and has to hold clock-speeds to fit the chips into typical thermal envelopes.

AMD did not comment on the news-story and did not confirm clock-speeds of the six-core chips.

*Estimation.

Tags: AMD, Thuban, Phenom, 45nm, Zosma, Leo