Advanced Micro Devices has officially introduced its highest-performance desktop microprocessor Athlon 64 X2 6000+, which has been available for several weeks now. The new chip, however, does not bring unparalleled performance or really low power consumption, however, it is priced at a relatively low level, which once again emphasizes hard competition that AMD is facing from Intel.

AMD’s dual-core Athlon 64 X2 6000+ central processing unit operates at 3.0GHz, contains 2MB of level-two cache in total (1MB per core), supports dual-channel PC2-6400 memory and has thermal design power (TDP) of 125W, according to information released earlier. The chip is designed for socket AM2 infrastructure and supports variety of AMD’s latest technologies, such as virtualization.

According to X-bit labs’ performance tests, the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ competes against Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700, however, most of the time it is slower than the latter and insignificantly faster than the former. At the same time, the price of the new Athlon chip – $464 in 1000-unit quantities – is substantially lower than that of the E6700 ($530) and considerably higher compared to the E6600 ($316).

Additionally, AMD introduced single-core energy-efficient AMD Athlon 64 processors with 45W TDP and 3500+ and 3800+ model numbers produced using 65nm process technology. The products are priced at $88 and $93 for 3500+ and 3800+ models, respectively.

The new processors are expected to be immediately available in the channel and from OEMs including Alienware, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Systemax and Voodoo.