Hexa-core Thuban pictured

AMD has been working on a six shooter for retail a long time, and so has Intel. Unlike Intel Core i7 980X not much information has leaked about Thuban, a.k.a. Phenom II X6. The launch is slated for Q2, but the company is still optimizing the server-geared Istanbul architecture that was the base of the processor.

We now have pictures of AMD’s Leo platform where Thuban showed its 6 processor cores in a regular AMD 890GX motherboard from Gigabyte. The CPU was a prototype that operated with 1.3V, but the exact frequency was unknown.