AMD announces world's first triple-core Athlon processors

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced Tuesday a new range of desktop microprocessors, including its first Athlon triple-core processors.

As part of the new lineup, AMD launched four Athlon II X3 triple-core processors, which are in between the dual-core Athlon II X2 and quad-core Athlon II X4 processors. The new processors run at speeds between 2.2GHz and 2.9GHz and draw up to 95 watts of power.

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at market research firm Insight 64 said the triple-core chips add responsiveness to PCs and headroom to run additional programs. Users can run programs like antivirus ones on the third core, while the first two are performing other system functions.

Triple-core processors fill a price and performance gap between the dual- and quad-core processors, so PC makers highly value them. Triple-core chips not only perform better than dual-core processors, but also cost less than the quad-core chips.

The Athlon II models that offers full multimedia performance was also released on Tuesday. It only draws 45 watts of power, which is much lower than most Athlon II chips available today.

The low-power lineup includes dual-core, triple-core and quad-core chips that run at speeds between 2.2GHz and 2.8GHz. The chips are priced at under $143 in units of 1,000.
 

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