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Review: AMD Phenom II: striking back with a vengeance?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 8 January 2009, 05:00 3.35

Tags: Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition, Phenom II X4 920, AMD (NYSE:AMD), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaqlv

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Introduction



The razzamatazz of CES 2009, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, provides the backdrop for a product launch that will define AMD's high-end desktop CPUs for the first half of the year.

Based on the company's 45nm manufacturing process and brought to market a couple of months after the launch of the similar server part, Shanghai, AMD's Phenom II quad-core processors promise higher clock speeds, to better compete against Intel's Core 2 Quad CPUs.

Phenom II 920 and 940, released at clock-speeds of 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz, respectively, will be available to buy in a couple of weeks. We investigate whether the advancements over incumbent Phenom X4 are enough to make them serious contenders in the <£250 market.