The Fastest Athlon (PCGH Retro, August 20)

…2001: The DVD is still a very young medium. It is already established as a replacement for video cassettes, but it is rarely used as a data medium in the PC – which is mainly due to the fact that it cannot be written to. To this day: On August 20, 2001, HP introduced the DVD100i, the first DVD+RW burner that allows special blanks to be rewritten for a price of 600 US dollars. The DVD is finally beginning to replace the CD as well.

…2007: AMD’s Athlon processor has a turbulent history: Launched in 1999, all versions of it were often faster than the competing Pentium CPUs from Intel. But now it has passed its zenith. The current Athlon X2 hardly has a chance against the current Core 2 series of the competitor at the upper end of the performance scale. Still, AMD is trying again and presents on August 20, 2007 the Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition. It runs at 3.2 gigahertz and is still manufactured using the old-fashioned 90-nanometer process – the newer Brisbane core with 65-nm structures has long been available. Although it belongs to the “Black Edition” series, the 6400+ does not offer a freely selectable multiplier. The chip remains the last Athlon processor for the high-end market – AMD will be relying on the Phenom in the future.