The Athlon 64 X2 is the first dual-core desktopCPU manufactured by AMD. It is essentially a processor consisting of two Athlon 64 cores joined together on one die with additional control logic. The cores share one dual-channel memory controller, are based on the E-stepping model of Athlon 64 and, depending on the model, have either 512 or 1024 KiB of L2 Cache per core. The Athlon 64 X2 is capable of decoding SSE3 instructions (except those few specific to Intel's architecture), so it can run and benefit from software optimizations that were previously only supported by Intel chips. This enhancement is not unique to the X2, and is also available in the Venice and San Diego single core Athlon 64s.
In June 2007, AMD released low-voltage variants of their low-end 65 nm Athlon 64 X2, named "Athlon X2"[1]. The Athlon X2 processors feature reduced TDP of 45 W [2].
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