Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday said it had begun shipments of its triple-core central processing units (CPUs) to large makers of personal computers (PCs). AMD Phenom 8000-series microprocessors will be available for end-users and small system makers at a later time.

The world’s second largest maker of x86 processors did not reveal specifications of the chips that it is shipping to its partners. However, based on information earlier revealed by unofficial sources, AMD started to ship AMD Phenom models 8450 (2.10GHz) and 8650 (2.30GHz) with 1.5MB level-two cache and 2MB of level-three cache based on B2 stepping of the core. AMD has not confirmed the specifications of its chips.

AMD Phenom B2 stepping processors are known for TLB-erratum, which may cause system freezes in certain rare cases and which can be fixed at the cost of about 10% of performance. AMD Phenom CPUs based on B3 stepping are erratum-free, thus, should show a little bit higher performance.

Earlier companies like Dell and HP demonstrated interest towards triple-core AMD Phenom 8000-series and intended to install them into their systems.

At press time AMD’s online price-list did not contain any mention of triple-core AMD Phenom 8000-series central processing units.