AMD Hits Top (Base) GHz with Quad-Core Phenom

Meh

I believe its time to say farewell to phenom II since during June AMD will launch its new processors lineup, with a new architecture.
Good Luck AMD, I hope you match my expectations with your new architecture, and especially with bulldozer.

After the new announcemets in June and when the new chips start shipping, I hope AMD processors will become cheaper especially the Phenom II X6 processors.

I hope their new CPU's deliver.... I really do.

Whether the new Bulldozer lineup beats intels sandybridge lineup, I will buy one of the AMD chips regardless. Not because i'm a AMD fanboy, but based solely on the real world performance of the skt 939 FX-55 chip i bought when i first built a gaming rig. I still have the rig as a backup unit, with a radeon hd4670 iceQ agp card. It'll still play WoW & SC2 at a decent resolution and quality setting without going ape.

It goes for about that same price that an Intel i5-2400 goes, which performs far better and has a lower power consumption. Even when you factor in the better value for money AMD motherboards offer compared to their Intel equivalents, Intel still wins hands down.

Phenom II was made as a response to the Intel Core 2 Duo/Quad. That it held up against the far more expensive and modern 1366 chips was testimony to its quality, but even a good architecture can't compete with something 2 generations ahead.

June just might change all that...

I bought a 2500K this month thinking I could buy a decent motherboard to match it. The thing is there's no good board you can buy thinking you're not giving up something even in extreme boards. That made think of plan B. I'll just wait to see what I'll get on the AMD side and if it delivers I'll just resell the cpu. Never felt like this before with Intel. Yes, it's always been expensive, but never crippled chipsets on purpose.

Looks like a pretty decent chip especially for gamers intending to upgrade. Legit Reviews has a nice review..

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1603/6/

They achieved a 4.2GHz overclock using the stock cooler and default core voltage, then 4.5GHz under liquid cooling. A good testament to AMD's engineering team, in particular their optimisation of the 'Deneb' core.

For media encoding the 980 BE appears able to run with the i7 950, but is a tad slower than the i5 2500K. However for most games it looks like these kind of differences are less pronounced, especially with games that are more GPU-limited.

The cheapest price I could find for the AMD 980 BE (4th May), was £150. Exactly the same price as an Intel i5-2500K. But take into account 1) AMD isn't charging you extra for the speed increase, and 2) The compatibility of this product in terms of both CPU sockets and memory. At this point I think the price argument sways in favour of AMD, especially if you already run AMD hardware and are looking for a nice speed boost.

Further, looking at the AMD product range there are some good bargains. Most if not all the other products should hopefully come down in price even more; I've already seen this, with some retailers altering their prices including the Phenom II x6.

So all in all, I'd say not bad at all despite an aged core design. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Phenom II x4 range ends with a 4.0GHz part. This shows that AMD is still supporting their existing user base despite Bulldozer looming on the horizon.

This kind of performance, stability, longevity and compatibility are also the primary reasons I chose to run AMD hardware for my computing needs even as far back as the old 80486 clones (remember those?) Since then I've had no regrets. I cannot say the same for all of my Intel clients. The latest Phenom II is not be the fastest or the most graceful horse in the today's race, but nonetheless it runs with the pack and it does so at a good price. Well done, AMD.