AMD has officially announced and released eight new Athlon branded processors, just in time for some Windows 7 upgrades that are probably going to happen once the new Micosoft operating system officially shows its face on October 22.

AMD has released no less than eight models in the Athlon II family with prices ranging from US $70 for the Athlon II X2 235e, up to US $140 for the Athlon II X4 605e. Both of these are a part of six energy efficient processors that are released today. These have a TDP of only 45W and clocks range between 2.2GHz to 2.7GHz. AMD has released two quad, two triple and two dual-core CPUs in this batch of Athlon II energy efficient processors. quad-core duo works at 2.3GHz and 2.2GHz and both feature 2MB of L2 cache. Triple-cores have the same clocks but with 1.5MB of cache, while the dual core work at higher 2.8GHz and 2.7GHz clocks with 2MB of L2 cache.

In addition to these energy efficient processors, AMD has released its first triple-core Athlon II X3 4x5 processors working at 2.9GHz for the 435 and 2.7GHz for the 425. Both of these have a TDP of up to 95W and come with 1.5MB of L2 cache. Both of these use the same architecture as the previously released Athlon II X4 quad-cores, except for the fact that one core is disabled. (You mean broken. sub.ed.) These two have US $87 and US $76 price tags.



According to the reviews that have showed up online, AMD has made quite an impressive pressure on Intel in this price range. AMD's Athlon X3 435, is definitely a better choice than anything that Intel has to offer in that price range, and it even manages to overpower the more expensive Core 2 Duo E7500. On the other hand Anand made a nice remark on AMD's Athlon II X3 435 which isn't that impressive when compared to the quad-core Athlon II X4 620 which is only US $12 more expensive and quite more faster in multi-threaded applications.

Firingsquad.com managed to get their hands on Athlon II X2 240e as well, and this 45W TDP sounds like a great deal for an HTPC system, something that is getting quite popular these days.

Guru3D.com also did a neat check on the Athlon II X3 435 and like Anand, Hilbert is also quite impressed considering the ~€60 price tag.