AMD is reportedly getting ready to add a triple-core variant to its A-Series processor lineup. The chip will be sold under the A6-3500 moniker and it is essentially the same as AMD's upcoming A6-3600, except for the fact that it has one core switched off. That means 2.1GHz clock speeds (2.4GHz with Turbo), 3MB of L2 cache, support for 1866MHz DDR3 memory, Radeon HD 6530D integrated graphics with 320 stream processors running at 443MHz, and a TDP of 65W.
AMD has yet to release a price for the triple-core Llano and we don't have a specific release date either, but reports claim the A6-3500 will be hitting stores sometime during Q3 with the rest of the A6-series line-up.
A forum poster by the name of bminggann on Chinese site ZOL got their hands on a sample and has uploaded some pictures and details about the chip in question, including a few CPU-Z and GPU-Z screens as well as AIDA64 and 3DMark06 scores. On the latter benchmark the A6-3500 managed a score of 5137, while bumping the core voltage to 1.552V bminggann achieved a 3.6GHz overclock and a higher 3DMark06 score of 5259.
Rumors also point at the possibility that some motherboards will let users unlock the fourth core on AMD's A6-3500, as it is possible today with triple-core Athlon II and Phenom II offerings. This means you could basically get a quad-core A6-3600 without paying full price for it – though it's not guaranteed to work in all cases.