CPU Update: AMD Demos Dual-Core Athlon 64

The dual-core race is heating up thanks to a recent surprise demo from the folks at AMD. According to ARSTechnica, “Toledo is expected to ship sometime during the second half of 2005, and will be a Socket 939 part, meaning it can utilized in current motherboards that support the Athlon 64 with a BIOS update. AMD claims no additional cooling will be necessary for the dual-core parts.

“AMD and Intel are both racing to get their dual-core products out. Intel looks to be first on the desktop, with the dual-core Smithfield (based on the HyperThreading-enabled Pentium 4) slated to ship during the second quarter of this year. When it comes to 64-bit x86 server chips, AMD will have dual-core Opterons out by mid-2005, while dual-core Xeons likely won’t see the light of day until 2006. Intel will ship a dual-core Itanium 2 later this year.”

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