AMD tweaks APU prices; releases Athlon II 651 CPU

Yesterday AMD launched server Opteron processors, based on Bulldozer micro-architecture. This event was widely covered by all hardware news sites. It is less known that yesterday AMD also changed prices of several Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), as well as the price of FX-6100 model. In addition to that, AMD introduced new Athlon II X4 651 microprocessor:

Click on the image to zoom

The price of six-core FX-6100 chip was reduced from $165 to $155, and it is now on a par with Phenom II X4 970. Triple-core A6-3500 APU has become a few dollars cheaper, and now it costs $85. Two budget dual-core APUs, A4-3300 and A4-3300, had their the price upped by $2, to $66 and $71 respectively.

AMD Athlon II 651 is a socket FM1 processor, and in many ways it is similar to previously released Athlon II 631 CPU. The chip has 4 cores with 1 MB L2 cache per each core, and no integrated Graphics Processing Unit. The 651 operates at 3 GHz, or 400 MHz faster than Athlon II 631, which makes it the highest clocked model for socket FM1. This processor is also more expensive than the 631. It is priced at $92, which is comparable to Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition. The new processor is not yet available in stores.

Specifications, and old and new prices of all affected CPUs, are provided in the table below:

Model	Cores	Frequency	Turbo Frequency	L2 cache	L3 cache	TDP	Old Price	New Price
A4-3300	2	2.5 GHz	N/A	1 MB	N/A	65 Watt	$64	$66
A4-3400	2	2.7 GHz	N/A	1 MB	N/A	65 Watt	$69	$71
A6-3500	3	2.1 GHz	2.4 GHz	3 MB	N/A	65 Watt	$89	$85
Athlon II X4 651	4	3 GHz	N/A	4 MB	N/A	100 Watt	N/A	$92
FX-Series FX-6100	6	3.3 GHz	-	6 MB	8 MB	95 Watt	$165	$155