AMD quietly changed the pricing on some of their Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) and even introduced a new Athlon-branded CPU. Such changes took a back seat to the launch of enterprise Opteron 6200 and 4200 processors based on Bulldozer architecture earlier this week.
In a rather unusual move, AMD increased the price of two budget dual-core APUs, the A4-3300 which operates at 2.5GHz and the A4-3400 with a frequency of 2.7GHz. The A4-3300 went from $64 to $66 while the 3400 variant saw a $2 increase as well, from $69 to $71. The triple-core A6-3500 with a clock speed of 2.1GHz saw a price break of $4, down to $85 from $89. Finally, AMD's six core FX-6100 processor is now $10 cheaper at $155.
The company also introduced a new processor, the socket FM1 Athlon II X4 651, a quad-core CPU with a 3GHz operating frequency. This chip features 4MB of L2 cache and has a 100 Watt TDP rating. Pricing on the 651 is set at $92, which is comparable to a Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition. As of writing, the new Athlon has yet to show up for sale online.
Earlier this week AMD launched two new Opteron processors, the 6200 and 4200 series (formerly code-named "interlagos" and "Valencia". The 16-core Opteron 6200 was selected in the top five products to watch for 2012 by HPCwire. Systems from Acer, Cray, Dell, HP and IBM are expected on the market in the coming days and weeks.