TechNudge 2005 Product of the Year - AMD Athlon 64 X2

The 64-bit environment, in general, was a big yawn for the desktop. You can probably count the number of copies of Windows 64 sold by hand. Part of that, of course, was because of a the lack of cooperation on the part of software vendors who refused to get in line --behind either Intel or AMD. And all of the PRbable about buying 32-bit today and having 64-bit for tomorrow, while it did fool some, was nothing more than marketing crap.

Dual core on the desktop, on the other hand, is the shot heard 'round the world. Put aside the fact that very little software takes advantage of dual core processors. (There are a couple of games just released that do and ATI may be developing drivers that do.) What's happened, however, is that dual core, piled on top of 64-bit technology, has sent a message that 64-bit is not going away. And as much as dual core apps may appear first, dual core 64-bit apps are just a stone's throw away.

Selecting the Athlon 64 X2 as TechNudge's Product of the Year was not as easy as you might think. It wasn't until AMD circled back and used its fastest CPU game technology to flank the productivity desktop that it became a full solution. (And yes, I'm talking about something I can't actually mention for 10 more days.)

I still think that AMD's cross bar switch either hasn't been developed to its best effect or else the chipsets created for it simply don't fully understand how it works. It should be faster than its --not that it's not fast enough already. That aside, however, this was a no-brainer. In fact, 2005 is the first year that AMD can honestly claim that it's driving the technology bus. The only real question is whether or not AMD can keep control. There are already a few small cracks.