As we have already promised you a few weeks ago, AMD started shipping Athlon XP SFF processors featuring low power consumption. And again the first place where this new product appeared turned out Japan. The price-list of the hardware store offering this processor it is listed as Mobile Athlon XP, however, in fact it is intended for low-profile economy desktop PCs.

It is interesting that the CPU features a standard textolite packaging and at first sight looks very much like the regular Athlon XP Palomino. But if we take a closer look we will see the differences between them, of course. The OPN marking of the die is AXL1500DLT3B, which is very similar to what the regular Athlon XP processors are marked with. However, the Vcore (the 9th “L” symbol) and the FSB frequency (the last “B” symbol) do not coincide with what is listed in the OPN table for Palomino processors. True, the bus frequency for this CPU makes 100 (200)MHz instead of the common 133(266)MHz, and the supported Vcore ranges between 1.05-1.45V, which allows reaching only 35W heat dissipation level. This is very important for those PCs, which are the main target for these processors, because very often their smaller size implies that they have a compact low-power PSU and have no room for massive cooling solutions, which are common for regular AMD CPUs. As for other features of the new product, it has a standard 256KB L2 cache and can stand up to 90 degreed die temperature. This CPU is currently selling for around $116.

The new Athlon XP supports Cool’N’Quiet technology, which allows changing the CPU core clock frequency depending on its utilization. Of course, this technology should be supported by the BIOS and the operation system, such as Windows XP. Today only the following mainboards support this technology:

• ASUS A7A266 (Board Rev.1.03) BIOS Ver.1010
• ASUS A7M266 (Board Rev.1.04) BIOS Ver.1007
• ASUS A7S333 (Board Rev.1.03) BIOS Ver.1004
• ASUS A7V266 (Board Rev.1.05) BIOS Ver.1002c
• MSI KT3 Ultra BIOS Ver.5.4
• MSI K7N420 Pro BIOS Ver.2.4

Well, AMD has introduced a CPU for a relatively new market segment of economy PCs, which has always been the territory of VIA C3 and Transmeta Crusoe CPUs because of specific thermal and power requirements. Now it is possible to assemble power-saving and compact computers boasting the performance and features of their elder brothers, which is a very encouraging thing for those users, who need a quiet but at the same time fast solution.