AMD started Toliman

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has started volume shipping its "Toliman" triple-core Phenom processors exclusively to PC makers and OEMs, as was announced in September last year.

According to an extremetech.com report, the company plans to officially launch "Toliman" chips in the first quarter of this year.
Another report suggests that initial products in the "Toliman" series will include: the 2.1GHz 8450, 2.3GHz 8650, and 2.4GHz 8750. Of which, AMD has begun shipping the 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz processors to Dell (for their OptiPlex 740 desktops) and to HP (for their AL195AW desktops) respectively.

The triple-core Phenoms are said to be less power-hungry than AMD's four-core Phenoms -- with a power consumption of 89W as compared to the 95W of the latter. The triple-core Phenoms support socket AM2+ motherboards while featuring AMD's HyperTransport 3.0 technology.

For AMD, the triple-core chips might be an effective way to sell quad-core chips that failed to run at expected speeds. Incidentally, the triple-core Phenoms are the same quad-core ones -- with one core disabled.

Leslie Sobon, director (Product and Brand Management -- Desktop Division) of AMD, said that the first "Toliman" samples had been sent to partners last year with glitches being fixed later. He claimed the triple-cores allowed for 30 percent added performance over dual-cores, while the quad-cores made for another 20 percent performance over triple-cores.

Incidentally, AMD's roadmap, released in September last year, also mentioned a second "Heka" triple-core chip in 2009 and a Gen-Next "Regor" dual-core chip the same year.