Digital Home Thoughts: AMD Unveils Four Dual-Core Turion CPUs

"AMD has launched its dual-core Turion 64 X2 notebook-oriented microprocessor line, as expected. Today's introduction saw the arrival of four of the chips aggressively priced to match what AMD is already charging for its top-of-the-line single-core Turions. The four new CPUs - aka 'Taylor' - are the TL-50, TL-52, TL-56 and TL-60. The first two are clocked at 1.6GHz, the TL-56 at 1.8GHz and the TL-60 at 2GHz. All four use AMD's new DDR 2 SDRAM-supporting Socket S1 interface and are fabbed at 90nm. DDR 2 support extends to 667MHz memory, not the 800MHz some pre-release rumours had suggested... In a desperate bid to match Intel's Digital Media Boost trademark, part of its Core 2 Duo technology, AMD launched one of its own: Digital Media XPress. Essentially, it's a new name for PowerNow!, the MMX, SSE, SSE 2 and SSE 3 compatibility system AMD's offered for some time."



It's a little off-topic, but seeing the amount of digital media work I do on my Turion-equipped laptop, I'm happy to hear faster, dual-core versions hitting the market. Digital Media XPress does indeed sound like so much hype, but hey, by changing it's name maybe they'll take a bite out of the sales Intel might have made with their Digital Media Boost technology. And in the processor wars, competition can only lead to faster CPUs at lower prices.