Chipmaker AMD last week added two new chips to its Opteron family of 64bit processors for workstations and servers. The move comes as the company prepares to introduce its Athlon 64 chip for mainstream PCs next week.

The 846 and 146 Opterons, available immediately, top off the company's 800 and 100 series of chips. Both new chips are clocked at 2GHz.

The 846 is aimed at four-way and eight-way systems, while the 146 is aimed at single-processor workstations. The new chips join the Opteron 246, announced last month, which added a 2GHz model to the 200 series for dual-processor systems. The 846 Opteron costs £2,000 in volume, while the 146 part costs £440.