AMD Unveils Phenom Processors

Apologies all around for not being able to post this yesterday (when it was actually news). For those sleeping under a rock (and thank you, since this news post is not for naught), AMD released their Phenom processors yesterday, after months and months… and months of waiting. It would be great to be able to report that the wait was well worth it, but AMD was unable to churn out a Phenom-enal processor this time around.

Anand took a hard look at the new processor and found that clock-for-clock, Phenom was about 15% slower on average over Intel’s Core 2 series. Performance aside though, could AMD make up for the performance loss with some competitive pricing? They could, but apparently that will not be the case until early next year. However, despite being slower than Intel’s current line-up, and despite Phenom being more power-hungry, and despite a late arrival, it’s finally good to see something out of the AMD camp. It’s just too bad it didn’t sweep us off of our feet like we hoped.

Source: Anand Lal Shimpi

To make the CPU more attractive AMD desperately needs to drop the price, and from what we’ve heard, that will happen in Q1. From what we’ve seen, AMD needs to be at least 200MHz ahead of Intel in order to remain competitive – that means bringing out a Phenom 9900 that’s cheaper than the Q6600, at least. If AMD can do that, it’s quite possible that in early 2008 we’ll have the first sub-$200 quad-core part as the 9500 drops in price.

Source: AnandTech