AMD's 45nm Phenoms ride 'Dragon'
HP, Dell breathe fire
AMD has unveiled a new gaming PC platform designed to provide "elite-level computing performance for under $900."
Dubbed "Dragon," AMD's chip-chipset-graphics combo is anchored by the struggling outfit's first 45nm desktop processor: the quad-core Phenom II X4. Both the chip and the Dragon made their official debut this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Phenom II comes in two flavors: the 3GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and the 2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X4 920. The Black Edition sells for $275, the un-Black Edition for $235. Both include 6MB of L3 cache, 2MB of L2 cache, and a memory controller that plays nicely with DDR2 and DDR3 memory.
In addition to the new 45nm chip, Dragon includes ATI Radeon HD 4800 graphics card and an AMD 7 series chipset. According to the company, HP, Dell, and Alienware will animate Dragon machines in the first quarter of 2009. Dell's Dragon-based XPS 625 desktop is already on sale for $1500 (without monitor).
AMD boasts that a Dragon consisting of a 2.8GHz Phenom II X4, an ATI Radeon HD 4870 with a GB of graphics memory, an AMD 790GX motherboard, and 4GB of DDR2-1066 memory can be had for under $900 - $1200 less than an Intel-based platform delivering comparable performance on a single benchmark test carefully chosen by AMD.
Dragon also includes several AMD-built software packages, including a handful of tools for optimizing performance and a media browser for juggling music, photos, movies, TV, and something called social media. In other words, this browser includes a built-in button that lets you upload photos directly to Facebook. ®
COMMENTS
Makes a Nice Change
Like a lot of people I suspect I have been looking at the i7 platrorm with a measure of disbelief at the pricing. Ok the i7 920 chip itself is competitive on price but the board prices are outrageous particularly considering that the chip is now doing the vast majority of the work.
It was therefore a pleasure to see the Phenom II 940 BE return competitive benchmarks. I like many had heard that the OC potential of these chips was something special but put this down to hype. I am glad to say my disbelief was unfounded and that the Phenom II genuinely has the i7 in its sights when things are cranked up.
I know that you are in reality looking at Q9770 equivalent peformance but from a chip who's design was written off 12 months ago this is very good news.
With AMD's DDR3 platform to come Intel are once again going to be looking over their shoulders at AMD and this cannot be a bad thing. I have in my time used AMD builds and was more than happy with them. It would seem that AMD are now truly back in business.
GO GO AMD
@ Shane
Here is your benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-940,2114.html
Like all AMDs before it these CPUs are targeted at price/performance enthusiasts, sure if you want to spend an extra $2k you can get Intel's i7 extreme platform that almost doubles AMDs Phenom II but I'm completely happy with my $1200 budget beast.
- here comes the fanboi in me...
It seems Toms Hardware review may be a bit off due to the fact the Intel platform was using DDR3 and the AMD AM3 socket (support of DDR3) hasn't been released yet... It would have been nice to see a Radeon 4870x2 instead of the GX250, to play nice with the AMD 7series chipset.
However I liked the review because of the closing statement by Toms Hardware...
"As a result of its exceptional energy efficiency advances and an affordable price/performance ratio, AMD Phenom II X4 deserves our seldom-granted Recommended Buy award."
All we need now is to benchmark this baby......
Seems like they are aping Intels approach of maxing out on onboard cache- though the new chip does look interesting. Its a pity that AMD got left so far behind Intel I've very fond memories of the good old K6-2 500- I must have build a few hundred systems with it. I'd really like to see this benchmarked against Intel processors at a similar price point and see where we're at, at the moment....... The fact that they have Alienware onboard is a good selling point........
