Recession stricken consumers are a rather cashless at the moment, so AMD though it might be a good idea to offer some cacheless quads aimed at the great unwashed.

The new Propus-based Athlon II quad-cores are starting to appear in retail, and in spite of having no L3 cache, they look like incredibly good value.

Take the Athlon II X4 620 for example. It's a 2.6GHz part with 4x512kB of L2 cache and a 95W TDP. Of course, it's a 45nm AM3 part with DDR3 support. Nothing spectacular, apart from the price tag. At €82 it is truly amazing value, as this is practically dual-core money. In case you need a bit more horsepower, you can go for the 2.8GHz Athlon II X4 630, which is currently listed at €99. A quick glance at Intel's quad-core pricing reveals that the cheapest Q8200 at 2.33GHz sells for €115.

We are a bit surprised by the 95W TDP, as we hoped for a bit less. However, if heat is your concern, you can go for the Athlon II X4 600e at 2.2GHz. It has a 45W TDP and you could probably cool it with a stamp sized strip of aluminium foil glued on with a bit of spit.

Some e-tailers are already shipping the new parts, but you'll probably have to wait a few days to buy them in your shop around the corner. You can find the listings here.