AMD’s Turion 64 Microprocessors Available in Retail

by Anton Shilov
04/17/2005 | 10:46 PM

While the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) market of desktop personal computer (PC) is very well developed and a lot of people assemble their PCs themselves, assembling of mobile computers is something not that popular due to complexity reasons. Nevertheless, there are still enthusiasts who would like to make their notebook themselves: AMD’s latest Turion 64 processors recently became available in Japanese retail.

Some stores in Tokyo, Japan, sell AMD Turion 64 processor MT-30 with 25W thermal envelope clocked at 1.60GHz and equipped with 1MB of level-two cache, for about $206, Akiba PC Hotline reports. It is unclear whether the chip is drop-in compatible with desktop mainboards for 754-pin processors, but it is known that such mainboards typically do not support PowerNow! energy saving technology with C3 Deeper Sleep state. The chip might be targeted at the upgrade market, but given that the Turion 64 was announced back in early March, there is hardly any installed base for it. It could make sense for Mobile AMD Athlon 64-based notebook owners to swap their processors for the Turion 64: the performance is likely to remain the same, or get a bit lower, but the battery life could improve; still, the size of a notebook will remain the same – pretty large in the case of AMD Mobile Athlon 64.

AMD Turion 64 targets the same space as Intel’s Centrino mobile platform – thin, light, but yet powerful notebooks. However, there is a significant difference between the Turion and the Centrino: the Turion 64 is a standalone processor, whereas the Centrino is a platform. AMD Turion 64 may be paired with any validated system logic from companies like ATI Technologies, NVIDIA Corp., Silicon Integrated Systems, ULi Electronics or VIA Technologies and any wired or wireless network adapters preferred by notebook makers. In case of Intel Centrino notebook manufacturers have to choose Intel Pentium M chip, Intel’s core-logic and Intel’s network controllers to be able to use the Centrino brand-name.

AMD Turion 64 mobile processor is designed to fit into 754-pin infrastructure with 800MHz HyperTransport speed, is equipped with either 1MB or 512KB of level-two cache and has built-in single-channel DDR memory controller supporting PC1600, PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM. Additionally, the chip features PowerNow! energy saving technology with C3 Deeper Sleep state that reduces power consumption during idle moments as well as 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions. Like all AMD Athlon 64 processors, the Turion 64 supports 64-bit capability in addition to Enhanced Virus Protection technology.

Akiba PC Hotline also reports that AMD Turion 64 notebooks from a local brand with 12.1” XGA screen, AMD Turion 64 MT-30 chip, 256MB of memory, 40GB HDD for about $925 will be available late this month.