AMD brings back Athlon in Zen-based form

AMD has announced that it is bringing back the Athlon brand with a quartet of new accelerated processing unit (APU) products based on the Zen central and Vega graphics processor microarchitectures - but it's only willing to share specifications on two.

Part of AMD's brand to challenge industry giant Intel at all levels, from the server and high-end desktop to entry-level parts, the company has confirmed that it is relaunching the Athlon brand with a trio of desktop processors: The AMD Athlon 200GE (and Athlon Pro 200GE), Athlon 220GE, and Athlon 240GE. In all cases, the parts combine Zen central and Vega graphics processing cores, but the company is playing its cards curiously close to its chest by revealing full specifications for only the Athlon 200GE and its Athlon Pro equivalent.

'We are proud to expand our successful Zen-core-based consumer and commercial product portfolios today with the addition of AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon Pro, and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen Pro desktop processors. The new Athlon desktop processors, now incorporating the advanced Zen core and Vega graphics architectures, energise a legendary processor brand in AMD Athlon – a brand that consumers and PC enthusiasts alike trusted throughout nearly two decades of innovation,' claims Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager for Client Compute at AMD. 'Additionally, we are continuing to offer business PC users more processing power than we ever have before with the launch of 2nd Gen Ryzen Pro desktop processors into the commercial market.'

The only model AMD is willing to detail at present is the AMD Athlon 200GE, which includes two physical cores and four threads (2C4T) running at up to 3.2GHz and 5MB of cache combined with three Vega graphics cores in a thermal design profile (TDP) of 35W. The Pro variant, meanwhile, adds the company's usual enterprise-targeted extensions to the same specification.

The AMD Athlon 220GE and 240GE, meanwhile, are being kept relatively secretive: AMD has confirmed their existence, and the fact that they will launch in the fourth quarter of the year, but has nothing else to say on the matter - not even to confirm the near-certain presence of Athlon Pro 220GE and 240GE variants. It has, however, stated that the Athlon 200GE will begin to appear in devices from September 18th, while the part itself has been priced at $55 (around £43 excluding taxes) in 1,000-unit tray quantities.