AMD’s Athlon lineup was, at one point in time, their flagship consumer processor, that banner was passed along to the Phenom lineup leaving the poor old Athlon brand to take over the low-end processor branding duties.

Of course there’s always room to move up in the world.

PC Perspective has some information on AMD’s upcoming “Propus” core which should see the Athlon name shine bright once more. Here’s a peek:

The last thing that needs covered here is the potential TDP of these products.  Since the Propus core is around 60% of the size of the Phenom II, we can expect the lower 2.4 GHz versions to be around 65 watts TDP, and potentially as low as 45 watts TDP.  The higher 3 GHz version would probably hit around 89 watts in the worst case scenario.  Something else to consider is that with the continual advances on GF’s 45 nm process, and the lack of large caches on the chip, we may even see TDPs dip into the 75 watt area for a 3 GHz part.

A cheaper and energy efficient quad-core for the desktop? It sounds like a tweaker’s dream chip no matter how you look at it.