AMD will brand its dual-core Athlon 64 chips 'X2' when they go on sale later this year.

So suggest sources close to the company, cited by Hexus. According to the site, three CPUs are due to be launched, all branded X2 and stamped with 4400+, 4600+ and 4800+ model numbers, respectively.

The top-end part will be clocked at 2.4GHz, apparently.

Hexus' source also claims AMD has no plans to introduce Athlon FX-branded dual-core processors.

That certainly chimes with AMD's public roadmap, which has its first desktop dualie, codenamed 'Toledo' and due to ship in H2 2005, sitting on its own above its updates to both the single-core Athlon 64 and FX line-ups - 'Venice' and 'San Diego', respectively.

That suggests Toledo will be branded separately, and X2, in the circumstances, is as good a name as any - and certainly better than the 'VIIV' Intel was rumoured to have lined up as a possible dual-core Pentium brand. ®

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