Gizmodo: Phenom X4

Although we said AMD would make the Q4 2007 ...

Wilson Rothman — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:40:19 EDT

Although we said AMD would make the Q4 2007 ship dates of Phenom chips, the '07 shipments are not going to be "substantial," says AMD's honcho. Better luck in 2008! [Reg Hardware]

AMD Quad Core Phenom Gaming System in the Flesh (and Blood)

Wilson Rothman — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:00:00 EDT

We just got the chance to play around with AMD's newest quad core system, the Phenom RD790 and a pair of ATI HD2900XT graphics processors. There's a whole lot of cooling going on, thanks to John Woo's new game Stranglehold. AMD is still mum on pricing and final specs, though they did reaffirm their desire to ship this sucker in "early Q4" of this year, so like October? The system managed the Havoc physics engine with ease, jumping into sepia-toned "tequila" time and into a zoom mode that gave a bullet's eye view of the action. Lack of specs notwithstanding, the experience was mesmerizing, right up to the point where one of the bad guys in the game took a bullet in the nuts, and I actually felt his pain. Wanna see?

AMD Rolls Out Phenom X2 and Phenom X4 Processors, FASN8 Platform

Charlie White — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:32:29 EDT

Now it's official, AMD has bumped its Athlon processors off the high horse and replaced them with Phenom X2 (dual core) and Phenom X4 (quad core) processors, and the company says these new chips will be part of its enthusiast platform it calls FASN8. The company's saying that when you lash these chips together with its DirectX 10 ATI Radion HD 2000 series graphics cards shipped today, you'll get, well, some serious graphics performance. We'll believe it when we see it, but the ability to have two of these quad-core processors on one motherboard will surely make for some serious eight-way action.

AMD added lots of bluster along with the announcement, too:

With this announcement, AMD also unleashes some world-class marketing guff, calling these Phenom X4 chips the first "true quad core" processors, accusing "other products" of "packaging two dual core chips to form their quad core processors." Accusations such as this volley directed at Intel signal a hot chip war on the way.

It's going to take a lot for AMD to catch up to Intel, though, but the enhanced performance per watt of these chips, along with their Dual Socket Direct Connect architecture, 128-bit FPUs and shared L3 cache might just put a bit of heat on Intel for a while. We can't wait to see the benchmarks on these chips, because until we see the performance numbers, this just sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo. – Charlie White

Press Release [AMD]

AMD's Quad-core CPUs Leaked?

Louis Ramirez — Mon, 07 May 2007 12:15:00 EDT

AMD has been pretty quiet, but that doesn't mean they haven't been thinking of ways to put an end to Intel's desktop dominance. Details have been leaked on the company's first four-core CPU, dubbed the Phenom X4.

The CPU will come in at speeds ranging from 2.2GHz to 2.6GHz, with HyperTransport speeds of 3.2GHz and 3.6GHz. For power users, AMD has the Phenom FX chips, which you'll be able to pair in twos for 8-core performance. The high-end FX and X4 chips are expected to ship this summer followed by mid-level X4s later in the year. Hopefully this marks the start of the Intel versus AMD war again. – Louis Ramirez

Final AMD "Stars" Models Unveiled [DailyTech via Electronista]