AMD Phenom II pricing

It's been about a week since AMD officially launched its new family of CPUs: the Phenom II, so we thought we'd have a look at UK pricing and availability.

Unable to compete with Intel in the upper echelons of CPU performance, AMD is focusing on price/performance as one of the key selling points of its CPUs. As a consequence it's vital that its new Phenom II processors are priced competitively.

In the table below two new AMD CPUs cost at a selection of UK etailers. As their worth will inevitably be assessed in comparison to equivalently priced Intel processors, we've included three of those too.

etailer	Product	Availability	Price (inc. VAT)
SCAN.co.uk	Phenom II X4 940 BE	In stock	£220.73
	Phenom II X4 920	In stock	£189.74
	Core i7 920	In stock	£240.55
	Q9400	Pre-order	£195.47
	Q8300	In stock	£183.99
ebuyer.com	Phenom II X4 940 BE	In stock	£229.99
	Phenom II X4 920	In stock	£197.95
	Core i7 920	In stock	£239.99
	Q9400	In stock	£225.95
	Q8300	Not listed	-
dabs.com	Phenom II X4 940 BE	In stock	£218.76
	Phenom II X4 920	In stock	£186.24
	Core i7 920	In stock	£239.99
	Q9400	Not listed	£202.16
	Q8300	Not listed	£183.99
yoyotech.co.uk	Phenom II X4 940 BE	In stock	£230.23
	Phenom II X4 920	In stock	£196.08
	Core i7 920	In stock	£243.98
	Q9400	In stock	£209.45

source: hexus.net

Intel's CULV to come in Q2

Vendors expect to ship 10 million units this year

Intel's new platform for thin and light ultraportables should appear as early as Q2 2009, according to Digitimes. The new platform, dubbed CULV for consumer ultra-low voltage, is a tweaked ULV Core series architecture, designed to take on AMD's Neo platform.

According to reports, the top three notebook vendors are working on CULV based products, and expect to sell as many as 10 million CULV based units before the end of the year. As the platform is scheduled for launch in Q2, this is quite an impressive number, but the $699-899 price tag of upcoming CULV notebooks is quite tempting.

Intel apparently plans to divide the notebook market into four segments. Everything above 12.1-inches will be traditional notebooks, it will have a Atom netbook segment, Menlow MID segment and the new, thin and light 11 to 13.3-inch market segment.

Intel's CULV platform should fill the gap between Atom based netbooks and ultraportables, or even classic 12.1-inch machines, mainly due to its competitive pricing. Intel's decision not to allow Atoms in machines over 10 inches also makes sense, as it would hurt its own upcoming platform and further lower the average selling price of its mobile CPUs.

AMD launched its Neo platform on CES, and at least on paper it is in the lead, but we have still to see actual product announcements or any word from AMD on the number of design wins. When Puma was launched some six months ago, AMD boasted 90+ design wins at launch day, and we all know Puma didn't manage to make much of an impact on the market. The only Neo based machine announced so far is HP's Pavilion DV2, which should be available in April.

More here.

Intel's new release: Core 2 Quad Q7500

Intel is planning to fight back against AMD not only with price cuts but also with a new release, that of the Core 2 Quad Q7500. Made using the 45nm process, the Core 2 Quad Q7500 has a working frequency of 2.6 GHz, a TDP of 65W, a FSB of 800MHz and just 2MB of L2 cache, half the size of Q8000 series models and six times less than the Q9x50s.

The L2 cache size is small, the Q7500 may end up a very attractive part depending on its price tag which should be under $150. There's no info on its release date though so we'll have to wait for Intel to make a move.

AMD 3.1 GHz Phenom II for Q2

AMD will have a busy year, following the release of two 45nm desktop CPUs, the Phenom II X4 940 BE and X4 920, it will also introduce the first DDR3-supporting Phenoms - six starting February. Following the initial AM3 roll-out, in Q2 AMD is expected to up the ante and put more pressure on Intel's Core 2 Quads with the release of the Phenom II X4 950, an AM3 CPU that will be clocked at 3.1 GHz, 100 MHz more than the X4 940 and 945.

Likely to be priced close around the $300 mark, the Phenom II X4 950 will have a dual-channel DDR3-1333 integrated memory controller, 6MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 125W. The 950 certainly won't get AMD much closer to the performance crown but it should give us an alternative to Intel's Q9650.

AMD delivers Sempron 210U and 200U CPUs

AMD has now introduced two new processors , the Sempron 210U and 200U. Featuring a lidless Ball Grid Array packaging, the two new low-power 65nm CPUs are set to be used for anything from enterprise-class thin client systems to point of sale kiosks, digital signage and more.

"These new lidless BGA packaged processors can help customers significantly shrink their embedded design into new smaller, flatter form factors without having to sacrifice any computing performance," said Buddy Broeker, director, Embedded Product Marketing, AMD. "Retail touch screens, self-service kiosks and digital signage are a growing part of the consumer experience and thin client computing continues to play a strong role in helping businesses become more efficient. These new processor features will help our customers stay on the cutting edge of embedded system design."

Specifications: the Sempron 210U and 200U have 256kB of L2 cache, integrated DDR2 memory controllers, frequencies of 1.5 GHz and 1.0 GHz respectively and TDPs of 15W and 8W.

Intel watercools Nehalem to 4.61GHz

François Piednoel, and the rest of its performance analysis group, have showed us Nehalem, Core i7 PC water cooled all the way to 4.61GHz.


They did it on an Intel desktop motherboard powered by Intel's desktop control center, something that lets you overclock from Windows. The voltage was all the way to 1.44V, whereas the chipset needed 1.21V.Host frequency clock, something that we used to call FSB speed of the machine is 144MHz, which multiplied by the 32 multiplier gives you the 4610MHz number.

The CPU temperature was at 61 degree Celsius while the CPU Voltage regulator was at 31 °C and chipset at 41 °C. The clock is much higher than the one you can score on Phenom II, but Intel’s CPU used here is much more expensive.

Nehelem, Core i7 is definitely better water overclocker than Phenom II but Phenom II still overclocks higher at 6GHz+ domains.

Intel announces Core 2 Quad Q6600 EOL

Intel recently announced that the company will take 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 orders until 8th of May, 2009, and will ship the CPU in box and tray version until August 7th 2009 and July 10th, 2010 respectively.Intel explained this move with the consumer demand shifting to higher performance CPUs. The Quad Q6600, which we tested way back, was insanely popular as it was a great bang for buck as it featured a decent price and overclocked nicely.

Due to quite a demand for it, it managed to outlive and certainly outshine its brethren, as it broke through quite a number of EOL announcements. Since this is a Kentsfield based CPU built in the now obsolete 65nm process, we do not expect it to do so again, so we’ll start baking its retirement cake.

Intel to release energy-efficient quads and cut CPU prices

Intel was planning the release of the Core 2 Quad Q8200s, Q9400s and Q9550s, its first Core 2 Quad CPUs to have a TDP of just 65W for this month. The launch is slated for Sunday, January 18 and it will also see to the introduction of two new low-cost dual-cores, the E7500 and E5400. Moreover, Intel will cut the price of six models, the Q8200 (features a 95W TDP), the E7400, E5300, E5200, E2220 and E1400.


All info regarding the January 18 changes can be seen in this chart. Intel is also rumored to be cutting prices of the rest of its Core 2 Quad line-up later on, this month.

Intel and AMD new quad-core chips

AMD and Intel ended 2008 with a new quad-core hit. There is Intel Core 2 Quad Mobile Processor Q9000 that is the latest mobile processor from Intel and it has been housed in the Acer’s recently launched 8930G laptop, and AMD’s Phenom II processors that have popped up online for consumers’ pre-orders.

As mentioned earlier, the Intel Core 2 Quad Mobile Processor Q9000 has been housed in the Acer’s recently launched 8930Gnotebook and this processor is running with 12MB of shared L2 cache in this laptop an with 2.53GHz clock speed rate upward and a 1066 MHz front side bus.

Aside from the Q9000 chip, there are many other impressive features in the new Acer notebook that also include DDR3 memory of 4GB, an 18.4inch LCD, a 1/2TB SATA hard disk and a NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT graphic card.

Aside from the Q9000, Intel is also release four more mobile processors, while AMD will debut its Phenom II processors publicly at CES next month. This new processor from AMD is already available for pre-orders and it runs at up to 3GHz of speed with an 8MB cache.

AMD 45nm Phenom II analysis and review

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.

Processors	Cores	Architecture	Process	Clock speed	L2 cache (total)	L3 cache	Memory-controller speed	Voltage	TDP	etailer pricing
AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition	4	K10	45nm	3.0GHz	2MB	6MB	1.8GHz	0.875-1.5V	125W	£215
AMD Phenom II 920	4	K10	45nm	2.8GHz	2MB	6MB	1.8GHz	0.875-1.5V	125W	£175
AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition	4	K10	65nm	2.6GHz	2MB	2MB	2.0GHz	1.05-1.3V	125W	£140
AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE	4	K10	65nm	2.5GHz	2MB	2MB	2.0GHz	1.05-1.3V	125W	£130
AMD Phenom X4 9750	4	K10	65nm	2.4GHz	2MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.1-1.3V	95W	£120
AMD Phenom X4 9650	4	K10	65nm	2.3GHz	2MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.1-1.3V	95W	£112
AMD Phenom X4 9350e	4	K10	65nm	2.0GHz	2MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.0-1.125V	65W	£110
AMD Phenom X3 8750	3	K10	65nm	2.4GHz	1.5MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.05-1.25V	95W	£99
AMD Phenom X3 8650	3	K10	65nm	2.4GHz	1.5MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.05-1.25V	95W	£82
AMD Phenom X3 8450	3	K10	65nm	2.1GHz	1.5MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.2-1.3V	95W	£75
AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition	2	K10	65nm	2.7GHz	1MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.2-1.25V	95W	£65?
AMD Athlon X2 7550	2	K10	65nm	2.5GHz	1MB	2MB	1.8GHz	1.2-1.25V	95W	£55?
AMD Athlon X2 6400+ BE	2	K8	65nm	3.2GHz	2MB	N/A	1GHz	1.35-1.4V	125W	£72
AMD Athlon X2 6000+	2	K8	65nm	3.1GHz	1MB	N/A	1GHz	1.1-1.4V	89W	£63