Until the launch of AMD’s FX-60 it had been a while since AMD updated the FX line of CPU’s, in fact the last FX was launched in June 2005. Since then AMD have of course launched a whole range of dual core CPU’s under the Athlon and Opteron brand and it’s that family of chips that the FX-60 has more in common with than the FX’s of yesteryear..

Rather than rushing a "launch" review we have been using this CPU for a month now under a vast array of heavy duty tasks ranging from online fragging to video encoding, so we will be giving you the verdict on whether this rather expensive CPU is worth the money... special thanks again to AMD for supplying the sample...

Let's take a look at what the FX-60 brings to the Athlon range.

The FX-60 is a 90nm part based on AMD’s Toledo core. AMD pack over 233million transistors into the FX60 at 90nm and end up with a die size just over 199mm2. The chip comes clocked at 2.6ghz and features 2 cores (like the X2 range of CPU’s). Cache levels are set to 64kb of both L1 data and L1 code and L2 cache is 1mb (per core). The chip supports all the usual technologies such as SSE3 and x86-64 and has a reasonably low operating voltage of 1.3-1.35v. We say low because the same Toledo core was used on the X2 4800+ and on that chip the voltage requirement is 1.35-1.4v for a slower 2.4ghz clock.

The FX-60 is, like previous high end Athlon’s, a Socket 939 part and will work in almost all 939 motherboards available since the launch of the platform (bios updates might be required). Like the FX-55 single core chip the FX-60 uses a HTT of 200 and multiplier of 13x to reach the 2.6ghz Clockspeed. This brings it in at only 200mhz slower (in terms of clock speed anyway) than the FX-57.

The FX-60 will be AMD’s last speed bump on the Socket 939 platform though with future chips being based on the AM2 socket which should launch some time in Quarter 2 2006. With this being a FX chip you can experiment a little more with your own Clockspeed increases as the multiplier is unlocked.

Number of cores	2
Frequency	2.6ghz
L1 cache	64kb data and 64kb instruction per core
L2 cache	1mb per core
System link	HT 2000MTs/sec, 1000MHz
Memory controller	128-bit Dual Channel DDR400 (PC3200)
Process technology Fab	90nm SOI AMD Fab30 Dresden, Germany
Transistor count / Die size	233.2 million / 199mm²
TDP / ICCmax	110W / 80A
Operating voltage	1.30V - 1.35V

Cool n Quiet is also supported by the FX-60 and with its TDP of 110w you will be pleased to hear no massive new cooling solution is required, any good socket 939 cooler (FX55 compatible and up) will do the job nicely. Additionally, if you enable Cool N Quiet the chip will further reduce heat and therefore noise by reducing the core speeds to 1.2ghz when idle.

So in summary… this chip is close in spec to two FX-55’s on the same die or a 4800+ with a 200mhz speed increase (and unlocked multiplier) ... depending on how you wish to look at it.