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PC Hardware
Two Phenom II's listed
Updated: Aussies ruin Christmas
An Australian e-tailer is probably enjoying AMD's wrath after listing two Phenom II CPUs on its site yesterday. The site was taken down after AMD released its hounds, but it was too late, and you can still find it here. Luckily for us, now we have a bit more info on the pricing of AMD's upcoming 45nm CPUs.
First in line is the AMD Phenom II X4 920, yes, 920, like Intel's i7. It's clocked at 2.8GHz, multiplier locked, it has 2MB L2 + 6MB L3 Cache and a TDP of 125W. The price stands at 471 AUD, which translates to 300USD or €200, depending on how much ground the euro loses against the dollar today. Note that prices in Australia are usually a tad higher than in the States and the cheapest Core i7 920 costs about the same on newegg.
The Phenom II X4 940 with an unlocked multiplier and a 3GHz clock is priced at 532 AUD (in real money that's 350 USD or 230 euro).
Take these numbers with a grain of salt. It's still a bit too early in the game to know the exact price, it's still subject to change. It seems a bit too closely priced to Core i7, which can only mean two things: either it's on par with Intel in terms of performance, or someone just crunched the numbers wrong.
Update:
After posting the story, we came across some additional information from several sources. It seems the site has jacked up the prices by about 10 percent over the MSRP. Coupled with traditionally high prices in Australia, it is likely the retail price in the US will end up about 25 percent lower than the $350/300 list price we reported. We don't have any exact numbers, and as we already said, it's a bit too early to have any at the moment. However, if the new Phenoms really do end up priced at $265 for the 940 model and $225 for the 920, they could become a tempting alternative to Intel's quad-core offer.