Committed to delivering the best bang for the buck, AMD is launching a total of six new processors today aimed squarely at budget and value price segments. The release consists of slightly higher clocked models in the Athlon II family available at about the same prices as previous flagships. That means around $150 and under -- and as you've seen from our last two processor round-ups this is where AMD hits the hardest.
At the upper end of the spectrum is the new quad-core Athlon II X4 640 for $122, which takes over from the 2.9GHz Athlon II X4 635 with a 100MHz bump in clock frequency and the same 2MB of L2 cache (4 x 512KB) and 95W TDP. Just below that is the new triple-core Athlon II X3 445, which is again clocked 100MHz higher than its predecessor, the 3.0GHz 440, and has 1.5MB (3x 512KB) of L2 cache along the same 95W TDP for around $87.
The 3.2GHz Athlon II X2 260 picks up from where the 3.1GHz 255 left off, priced at around $76, with a total of 2MB L2 cache and a TDP of 65W. Then if you are interested in building a media center PC or simply want to keep power consumption at a minimum, three new processors are available: the Athlon II X4 610e clocked at 2.4GHz for $145, the 2.5GHz Athlon II X3 415e for $102, and the Athlon II X2 245e clocked at 2.9GHz priced at $77. All three of them carry 45W TDPs. The dual core part features 1MB L2 cache per core, and the remaining two each offer 512KB per core.
