Saturday, February 27, 2010

AMD's six-core Thuban CPU to launch April 26?


Only a few days ago rumors surfaced that AMD's 890GX and 880G chipsets would debut on March 1 and April 26. Now, word has trickled from Sunnyvale that the company's six-core Thuban processor will be showcased at CeBIT 2010 (March 2 to 6) and corresponding with the aforesaid 880G launch, OCWorkbench claims Thuban will also be released on April 26. Previous speculation suggested Thuban would appear in May.

AMD has kept a tight lid on its new hexa-core processor, so next week's unveiling should be interesting. To recap what we've heard about the chip: it will land in three iterations branded Phenom II X6 1035T, 1055T, and 1075T, all of which are 45nm-based and compatible with AM2+ and AM3 sockets, so they should work with existing motherboards -- though, a BIOS update might be required.

Earlier this month, we also heard that Thuban will have some form of hardware-based dynamic speed boost technology called "C-state performance boost," which would act similarly to the Turbo Boost feature found in some Core i5 and i7 processors.