AMD releasing Athlon-branded K10More Athlons on the horizonBy Paul Taylor: Thursday, 28 August 2008, 9:45 PMWELL, IT SEEMS ATHLON will get a refresh of sorts. According to some info posted on Xbit Labs yesterday evening, AMD partners have said that there’s an upcoming K10-based Athlon X2 just around the corner, the X2 6500. This is a dual-core 2.3GHz @65nm part with 2x512KB of L2 cache, 2MB L3 cache, an integrated DDR2 memory controller and a 95W TDP – sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it?The article further states that the multiplier will be unlocked. However, unlocked multipliers might work best for retail rather than channel, as enthusiasts will pick it up for the overclocking factor. It isn’t low-power, it isn’t 45nm… we can only hope it’s cheap as the proverbial chip.We fired off some enquiries to AMD, but their best (and only) answer was “we can’t comment on rumour and speculation”… for an instant there we thought we were talking to Intel.The remainder of the answer did, however, leave the hairs on the back of our necks raised: "You can expect us to continue to offer Athlon branded processors in the future."Apart from the thought that plaguing the Athlon with the same marchitecture as Phenom might be akin to spreading a very contagious and deadly disease to a relatively healthy brand, you won’t be able to tell heads from tails of their marketing plans.
