Lostcircuits makes a wonderful in depth analysis of the Phenom architecture. Reading it makes it clear why current reviews while correct doesn't show off all the Phenom is capable of. It's certainly no dog
http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_phenom/
MvH Dan Andersson
Thorough Phenom review.
Moderators: Harvey Williamson, Watchman
Yes but at 65nm it is not competitive
I have been an AMD fan since the heydays of the initial 266Mhz AMD processor. I still have a slot AMD 550Mhz which I had re-soldered and overclocked it at 750Mhz ... it still runs perfectly but sounds like a jet engine!
AMD has fundementally a very competitive architecture compared to the Core 2 family ... but it needs a die shrink BADLY! The new 45nm Intel cores can easily clock to 4Ghz on air, and I am afraid even with the onboard memory controller AMD just cannot compete. AMD needs to pair up with someone really strong like IBM or Samsung to get the fabs and R&D to compete with Intel. For a long time they had a superior product to Intel but it seems that Intel has gotten its act together. The future for Intel with an overclockable Xeon dual socket platform looks very strong and I don't think that AMD has anything to even touch that. I would like AMD to come back though ... competition makes hardware advances much quicker.
AMD has fundementally a very competitive architecture compared to the Core 2 family ... but it needs a die shrink BADLY! The new 45nm Intel cores can easily clock to 4Ghz on air, and I am afraid even with the onboard memory controller AMD just cannot compete. AMD needs to pair up with someone really strong like IBM or Samsung to get the fabs and R&D to compete with Intel. For a long time they had a superior product to Intel but it seems that Intel has gotten its act together. The future for Intel with an overclockable Xeon dual socket platform looks very strong and I don't think that AMD has anything to even touch that. I would like AMD to come back though ... competition makes hardware advances much quicker.