AMD gears up for 3.2GHz Athlon

The company is obviously battling out leakage issues with K10 processors, as Charlie reports.

So it makes perfect sense to tweak up the existing line-up as high as possible.

A guinea-pig processor to try to sort out the problems is sampling right now to various partners, preparing for a launch designed ot coincide with the end of the summer holidays.

The highest-numbered model you can buy today is the 6000+. The 200MHz clock bump will yield a 400 PR mark increase, in line with AMD's policy of, um, exaggerated calibration.

This processor is expected to go up against Intel's Core 2 Duo E6850, which is nothing but a first Core 2 Extreme with a faster FSB - 1.33GHz instead of the 1.06GHz of yesteryear.

Preliminary benchmarks put the 3.2GHz Athlon above the 2.66GHz C2D E6700, but it comes a bit late, and performance is likely to be lower than that of the E6850. µ