Advanced Micro Devices is preparing to fire a new engine for hot-rod PCs.
The chipmaker will unveil its Athlon 64 FX-55 chip next week, in an effort to bump up the performance of game desktops and other high-end PCs in time for the holiday season. The chip is expected to be unveiled on Tuesday, along with the AMD Athlon 64 4000+, the company"s highest-performance processor for mainstream desktops.
Chips such as the Athlon 64 FX and Intel"s Pentium 4 Extreme Edition populate the very top of the desktop market, appearing mainly in game machines fitted with the latest graphics cards and high-performance storage systems to render games with the greatest speed. PC makers generally don"t sell game machines, which often cost well more than $2,000, in large numbers. But the market segment is one of the more profitable of the desktop PC business, both for manufacturers and for AMD and Intel.