AMD has rounded out its Athlon II family this week with the addition of two new budget chips based on its 45nm K10 architecture, the Athlon II X2 245 and 240. These dual-core parts are positioned below the AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor that was launched earlier last month, and have been specifically designed to provide users with a cost-effective and energy-efficient alternative for their home PCs.
The Athlon II X2 245 and 240 are clocked at 2.9GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively, feature 2MB of L2 cache and have a TDP of 65W. Both processors are expected to hit stores in the near future priced between $60 and $66 - which should put the Athlon II X2 245 up against Intel's 2.5GHz Pentium E5200 and the X2 240 positioned to compete with the 2.4GHz Celeron E1500.
In addition, the company has quietly released an updated version of the Phenom II X4 945 quad-core processor, which draws less power than its predecessor. The chip runs at 3GHz, has 8MB of cache and draws 95 watts of power - down from 125 watts. It is priced at around $243 and will hit store shelves on July 29.