AMD roadmap update

By now you all know AMD plans to unveil their upcoming 45-nm Phenom II CPU at CES next month at speeds as high as 3.0GHz. The chip is expected to rival Intel's Penryn family of quad-core CPUs in terms of performance. AMD is also expected to introduce AM3 and triple-core Phenom CPUs shortly thereafter.

DigiTimes is reporting that the AM3 launch will occur in February, with six CPUs on tap for release: the Phenom II X4 925 and 910 with 6MB of L3 cache, the X4 810 and 805 with 4MB of L3 cache, and the X3 720 and 710 with 6MB of L3 cache.

AMD will then follow up with Athlon X4 600 and Athlon X3 400 CPUs that ship without L3 cache in April. These chips will be based on AMD's Propus core. Most of today's AM2+ motherboards should be forward-compatible with AM3 CPUs with a simple BIOS update.