AMD Boosts Speed, Price of Athlon FX

AMD has launched what it calls the fastest desktop processor for gaming on the market, but the new Athlon 64 FX-57 chip won't come cheap. Packing a speed of 2.8 GHz and 1MB of level-two cache designed for speeding up the latest games, the FX-57 will run $1,031 - over $300 more than the 2.6 GHz FX-55.

While both AMD and Intel are pushing new dual-core processors as the future for desktop PCs, the FX-57 retains its single-core roots. AMD says today's games are not optimized for more than one processor brain and the company can offer better performance by improving other aspects of the chip.

"The AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor is the highest performing single-core processor in the consumer market and I believe that at least for the next 18 months, it is this single-core performance that will be most important to the most competitive players of PC games," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst for The Enderle Group.

Partners such as Alienware, Velocity Micro and Voodoo PC have plans to build systems using the FX-57 chip. Departing from the norm, AMD will unlock the processor and certify third-party cooling systems to allow OEMs to sell FX-57 systems running at speeds higher than 2.8 GHz.

Such overclocking has always been popular with computer enthusiasts, and AMD hopes to build a following along that group. Liquid cooling has previously enabled the FX-55 to be pushed from 2.6 GHz to 5 GHz.

"Now in our fourth iteration, the AMD Athlon 64 FX family of processors continues to remain unmatched in the industry, designed to provide even the most demanding gamer with reduced memory latency and increased performance," said AMD corporate vice president Bob Brewer.