Well, well. Earlier this month, AMD formally revealed that its low-power Kabini APU is coming to the desktop in socketed form. The chips weren't supposed to arrive stateside until April 9. However, two of them have already popped up at major online retailers.
A couple of Amazon partners list the Athlon 5350 and 5150. The prices are lower at TigerDirect, which also has stock. That vendor is charging $59.99 for the 5350 and $49.99 for the 5150. Here's how the two stack up:
Model | Cores | Clock speed | L2 cache | GPU | TDP | Price |
Athlon 5350 | 4 | 2.05GHz | 2MB | Radeon HD 8400 | 25W | $59.99 |
Athlon 5150 | 4 | 1.6GHz | 2MB | Radeon HD 8400 | 25W | $49.99 |
Both processors are equipped with quad CPU cores, but the Athlon 5350 has a 450MHz edge in clock speed. There are no differences in cache sizes, thermal envelopes, or integrated graphics.
The specifications match an earlier leak that also mentioned a slower quad-core variant and a dual-core chip, but neither one seems to be selling online. I don't see any compatible motherboards listed yet, either. Several desktop Kabini boards have been announced already, so it probably won't be long before they're available for sale. Thanks to CPU-World for the tip.