by Anna Filatova
06/13/2002 | 11:36 PM
As we have actually expected, see this news story, AMD on Monday announced the launching of the new Athlon XP processors based on 0.13micron Thoroughbred core. In fact, they launched only one model rated as 2200+, working at 1.8GHz core clock and selling for $241 in 1,000-unit quantities. All other models rated as 2100+, 2000+, 1900+, 1800+ and 1700+ will be released without any loud announcements and will little by little replace their 0.18micron brothers in the market.
I would like to remind you that the 0.13micron Athlon XP CPU will have no architectural differences from the 0.18micron predecessor: 128KB L1 cache, 256KB L2 cache, MMX and 3DNow! instructions, 266MHz DDR system bus, etc. The shift to a new manufacturing technology allowed reducing the power consumption of Athlon XP processors (see this news story), though not so significantly as we have actually expected, because of the pretty high CPU Vcore of faster models. By the way, this is one more distinguishing feature of the new 0.13micron processors from the 0.18micron Athlon XP: the latter worked at unified CPU Vcore (1.75V), while the new 0.13micron processors do not support it (the slowest 1700+ model works at 1.5V, the freshly launched 2200+ model supports 1.65V, as we have already told you here). Frankly speaking, I consider 1700+ 0.13micron Athlon XP to be the most exciting model in the family: it will cost not much, consume little power and boast higher overclockability.<%BANNER[article]%>
However, we will have to wait for another while for the new Athlon XP on 0.13micron core to appear in our stores. They claim we should wait until July. AMD is known to be still unable to ship enough of these processors to all parties interested so far that is why only the company’s preferred partners will appear the first to receive the new CPUs in bulk. They are Hewlett-Packard (for Compaq Presario 8000Z and HP Pavilion 562) and Fujitsu-Siemens.