AMD Debuts Entry-Level Dual-Core Athlon, Cuts Prices

The 3800+, a 2.0GHz chip that sports 512K of L2 cache memory, is meant to push AMD's dual-core technology into a broader market by virtue of its $394 price point in lots of 1,000, the lowest price for the double-processor chips.

AMD dropped prices of other X2 processors at the same time. The top-of-the-line 2.4GHz 4800+ X2, for instance, fell to $902 from $1,001 in lots of 1,000.

The X2 line also features AMD's Enhanced Virus Protection (EVP) technology, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker's name for No eXecute, a way to block some, though not all, buffer overflow attacks.

Rival Intel unveiled its first dual-core desktop chip, the Pentium D, in May, just days before AMD rolled out its first X2.