This AMD press release officially announced that the PC processor and chip maker has launched the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 dual-core processor along with AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ processor that are compatible with AMD's new socket AM2 platform. The first reviews can be found on Bjorn3D, FiringSquad, Guru3D, HardOCP, HardwareSecrets, Hexus.net, HotHardware and TechReport.

HotHardware: The new AM2 platform showed a small advantage in some applications but nothing earth-shattering. However, undoubtedly the Athlon 64 FX-62 on the AM2 platform is easily the fastest Desktop processor on the market today. The Athlon 64 X2 5000+ showed some situations where it was on par with a similarly clocked FX-60 but obviously not in cases that are memory latency or memory footprint sensitive (Windows Media Encoder/Mozilla multi-tasking), since it has only 512MB of cache per core. Between the nForce 590 SLI and the CrossFire Xpress 3200, it was a virtual toss-up, save for the small, hopefully temporary glitches we saw in NF590's SATA throughput. The CF Xpress 3200 runs cooler and consumes less power the nForce 590 SLI, but in gaming scenarios SLI has its obvious advantages, as does CrossFire.

TechReport: Although their performance is largely equivalent, the CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 and nForce 590 SLI really couldn't be more different. ATI's chipset is a rather simple affair, with a solid spec but few frills or extras, while NVIDIA's latest nForce is jam-packed with peripherals and additional features, some of which are more gimmicky than others. Fortunately, both are easy to recommend, but for different reasons. The CrossFire Xpress 3200 for AM2 is the first all-ATI chipset we have no qualms about recommending. ATI's new SB600 south bridge appears to have resolved the I/O performance issues that afflicted the SB450. With a solid Native Command Queuing implementation, support for 300 MB/s transfer rates, and RAID 10, the chip's feature set doesn't leave us wanting. However, the SB600's lack of integrated Gigabit Ethernet does leave the door open for motherboard manufacturers to use cheaper GigE chips with less appealing performance characteristics, specifically higher CPU utilization. Some will get it right, but as we've seen with Xpress 3200 platforms for Socket 939, others will almost certainly get it wrong.

HardOCP: AMD is doing the right thing with their move to DDR2 and AM2. If you are the kind of person that buys a full built system, really at this time, don't be worried if you have DDR or DDR2. You will likely never know the difference and adding more DDR memory will not be an issue for a while to come. If you are building a system now, I would suggest you go ahead and make the move to DDR2, unless of course you possibly just invested in a 2GB of quality DDR. If you are the guy that is building a base system but is constantly upgrading, you will hate yourself later if you don't move to DDR2 now as we are likely to see some great overclocking out of it this year.

Bjorn3D: AMD has done what we feel to be an outstanding job with the introduction of their socket AM2 lineup. The X2 5000+ we reviewed today completely surprised us from the standpoint of how well it performs, particularly in the realm of memory related benchmarks. We forgot to mention earlier that the X2 5000+ in our test system performed as much as 6-7 degrees Celcius cooler than its FX-60 opponent. This is an 89 watt processor, not the low energy 65 watt version that will be available in the socket AM2 series up through the X2 4800+.

FiringSquad: The one dark cloud ominously hanging over AMD' AM2 launch today is Intel' Core 2 "Conroe" processor. Intel has not so subtly made some pretty bold claims when it comes to Conroe's performance. If Intel is able to hit these numbers, the FX-62 and 5000+ could be hard-pressed to keep up, but the question is how much will Conroe cost when it's released, and what kind of availability will Intel be able to deliver? No one knows the answer to those questions right now.

HardwareSecrets: We didn't see any performance improvement by the use of DDR2 memories instead of DDR. In fact, Athlon 64 FX-60 was faster in several situations, showing that at least for the software we used having a bigger L2 memory cache is better than having DDR2 memory instead of regular DDR. But, on the other hand, we have to consider the future and what is behind AMD's strategy in going to AM2 socket and DDR2 support. In our opinion, what is important isn't the release of Athlon 64 5000+, but the possibility of increasing the memory bus clock rate in the near future. For socket 939 platform this was not possible since the top DDR official standard was DDR400/PC3200. With AM2 AMD can finally go beyond that, as DDR2 official standards include at least three speed grades above that: DDR2-533, DDR2-667 and DDR2-800. That is promising.