AMD has confirmed that dual-core Athlon 64 chips are currently being sampled to OEM system builders. That means that their plans to bring them out for general release by June are right on track. Not much is available in the way of details on the chip and its care and feeding, but I’ll pass along anything I can get my hands on.

Even though Intel released their server-level dual-core chips this month, they’re still lagging when it comes to a desktop-level release. Some few of the high-powered chips are available for sale, but the price is likely to be astronomical, since Pentiums are always more expensive than their alternatives.

Here are the few details they’ve released so far -

Unlike rival systems, the migration to dual-core processing with AMD will be seamless, thanks to a non-disruptive upgrade path. Because the AMD Opteron processor was architected for dual-core from the very beginning, the power envelope for dual-core processors is designed to accommodate existing sockets and power infrastructures enabled for 90nm single-core and allows you to maintain a single-core system footprint and power envelope. The
AMD64 environment also allows businesses to deploy existing x86 applications, but adds the capability to run 64-bit OS solutions specifically designed to exploit the potential of dual-core.