AMD to bring back the mighty FX CPU?

 The rumour mill is rife with intimations that AMD is planning to release a Phenom FX CPU next year.

We remember the halcyon days when AMD performance-ruled the desktop processor market and, at that time, FX was the pinnacle processor.

The FX line was largely shelved after Intel's Core 2 Duo delivered a case of whoop-ass in May 2006, and whilst re-emerging as Quad FX a short while later, AMD's lack of technical progress has meant that the continued use of range-topping FX nomenclature would be an embarrassment in itself. Rather, in recent times, the company has attributed a 'Black Edition' tag to various unlocked quad-core Phenom CPUs.

Now, 2009 will see the introduction of the desktop-oriented Phenom CPU shipping with core enhancements and based on a 45nm manufacturing process. Codenamed Deneb, AMD is optimistic that it will easily scale to 3GHz, and beyond.

Trouble is that the core enhancements, largely known with the drip-like release of information concerning the equivalent server part (Shanghai), aren't predicted to add huge performance gains in a desktop environment. Our best guess is that Deneb, on a clock-for-clock basis, will come close to matching the performance of presently-available quad-core chips manufactured by Intel, based on the 45nm Penryn architecture.

But then there's Core i7 (Nehalem), which will launch significantly beforehand and serve to extend Intel's dominant performance leadership at the high-end of the desktop market.

If born-again FX is to live up to its lineage, AMD will need to ramp up clocks far beyond present roadmaps suggest, because, otherwise, Core i7 will simply and inexorably gobble-up market share as lower-speed processors are released.

To put in bluntly, we'd be surprised to see AMD able to charge more than $250 for any desktop processor in 2009.