AMD’s quad-core without L3 cache, based on 45nm K10.5 Stars technology, has been sampled. This was the plan all along and AMD engineers are playing with it as we speak. Some partners do have samples, while official production and shipping will start only in Q2 2009.

Propus is a quad-core with 2MB cache or 512KB cache per core, and it won’t have L3 cache at all. It won’t be just Deneb with 6MB L3 disabled. This core will be manufactured without L3 cache and it will be much smaller and it will give AMD a price advantage, as it will be relatively cheap to produce.

This CPU will run at speeds of up to 2.7GHz and we’ve learned that it will end up branded as Athlon X4, not Phenom X4 as many have believed. This CPU comes in AM3 packaging and will have a 95W TDP.