AMD launches new chip and shouts that you can't keep a good company down.
Many have rushed to accuse AMD of launching its law suit against Intel in order to push home the current advantage the company has in desktop processor technology. We don't think that the world of business, of all worlds, would be that cynical and we blame coincidence for the fact that this week saw the launch of what is advertised as the ultimate gaming chip.
The new AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 runs at 2.8 GHz, compared to the 2.6-GHz of the FX-55 the company's former flagship chip. The Athlon 64 FX-57 is built using a 90-nanometer process for greater efficiency, lower heat build-up and lower manufacturing costs. The FX-57 also features a 1MB L2 cache and a 2-GHz HyperTransport bus. While the platform still offers no support for DDR2 memory, it tops out at DDR533. The FX-57 will headline AMD line-ups together with its dual-core model; the Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
The chip will fit on to any 939 socket motherboard but a bios update will be necessary.
The first reviews that have surfaced suggest that the FX-57 is the current gaming trophy-processor with performance better than that of the dual-core chips while it also seems to be faster than the 64-bit 3.73-GHz Pentium Extreme Edition.
The new chip demonstrated robust performance in a variety of video, audio and compression tasks but the real performance boost was obvious in gaming. The FX-57 performs consistently better than all other processors in most games and its performance was particularly impressive in high-end games.
Availability and Pricing
The AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor is available immediately worldwide. Systems based on the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor are expected to be available from the following companies:
Europe: Amitech, Atelco, Dacco, Evesham, Fox, Hyrican, Komplett, Levi, Mesh, and Scan
US and Canada: ABS, AFT, Alienware, Bass, BOXX, Canada Computers, Cyberpower, Elite PC, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, Micro Center, Might Micro, Monarch, Nor-Tech, Now Micro, PC Club, Planet Computers, Polywell, Systemax, Totally Awesome, Velocity Micro, Voodoo PC, Zipzoomfly, and ZT Group
Japan: Am-system Co., Bless Corporation, and Thirdwave Corporation
This is a high-end chip for high-end games and unfortunately at USD 1031 it will only become reality for high-end gamers. The prices refer to 1,000-unit PIB quantities.
