Buy Athlon 64 FX-60 today! Or not?

ALTHOUGH INTEL launched its Extreme Edition 955 with two 65-nano Presler cores on December 27th of last year, AMD did not respond with its counter-part, the Athlon 64 FX edition. The reason for that is very clear: Pentium EE 955 isn't slated for mass-availability before second week of January, when AMD will release its first product of the year.

Athlon 64 FX-60 marks the end of single-core CPU's, and finally puts the last nail into the coffin of single-threading. The product will be clocked at 2.6 GHz and it will actually get beaten in some 3D tests by its predecessor, 2.8 GHz clocked FX-57. The new FX-60 has two cores joined at hip, with a modified memory controller to fit the bill. Each of the cores has 128KB of L1 and 1024KB of L2 cache memory, while the Front Side Bus will remain the same: two 16-bit bi-directional HyperTransportTunnel (HTT) clocked at 1GHz each. Manufacturing process is still 90nm SOI, done by Fab30 in Dresden. However, things will change rather quickly, with Chartered Semiconductor and spankin' new Fab36 coming on-line in Q2.

The reason for this story is actually - eBay. In several dozen e-mails I've received (thanks to all readers who sent their best wishes; May Godspeed be with you all), readers asked me is it true that a certain power-seller has AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 available for sale? I went to the site, and saw that the seller was using pictures from well-known have-it-all web-site, our colleagues at PC Pop. The seller claims you can buy the CPU now (with "buy-it-now" option being the only one available) for affordable 1.525 US dollars, instead of "waiting for months" and "unknown MSRP". Of course, those 1525 dollars need to be transferred now. At first, everything was normal, since having a product available before its official launch will always earn you some hefty cash. However, when reading the small print, you'll learn that actually you will need to spend 1525 dollars now to get the CPU which will be released next week, at a price far more cheaper than this "premium" price.

L'INQ
Pay now, get one AFTER launch