With the CPU wars reaching red hot temperatures right now, AMD has taken it upon themselves to preview their Athlon 64 X2 processor. While there are still a lot of questions that are surrounding this chip, the flavors that it will be served up in will be enough to make Baskin and Robins jealous.

Another Monday, another NDA lifted. This time, it’s AMD deciding that the time has come to take the wraps off of their dual-core desktop CPU, the Athlon 64 X2. AMD demonstrated the dual-core chip in February and gave details on pricing and availability when the dual-core Opterons were launched last month. Despite the fact that the processors will not be widely available until the latter half of this year, the usual suspects have put the upcoming CPU lineup through its paces with some interesting results.

When it finally hits store shelves, the Athlon 64 X2 will come in four flavors: the 2.2GHz 4200+ and 4400+ and the 2.4GHz 4600+ and 4800+. The 4200+ and 4600+ sport 512KB of L2 cache while the other two have 1MB. Pricing… well, you’ll need deep pockets. The 4200+ starts at US$537 and the 4800+ will set you back a cool grand (US$1,001), which is comparable to Intel’s dual-core lineup (e.g., the Pentium D 840 on the low end and the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 at the higher price points). The X2s should work in any Socket 939 motherboard with a BIOS update. [Read the rest]