Got a pinch of salt at the ready? Good, here goes. ECS, the Taiwanese manufacturer of PC components, has updated the CPU support page for its AMD 790GX-based A790GXM-A motherboard.
Amid the long list of supported AMD processors, there's one anomaly:
That's it, second from the top - an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 6500+ running at 3.6GHz.
According to the listing, the 3.6GHz chip is the first dual-core part to utilise AMD's B3 stepping. But that alone can't explain the performance leap to 3.6Ghz, we feel, particularly when keeping at a TDP of 95W. Something doesn't add up, and our resident chip-boffin Tarinder Sandhu surmises that maybe, just maybe, AMD could hit 3.6GHz at 95W on a 45nm part.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, AMD does already have a chip listed as the Athlon 64 X2 6500+, and it's just a 2.3GHz affair. Either ECS has its wires crossed, or it's inadvertently provided an early glimpse at some of that Intel-worrying 45nm performance we keep hearing about.
