14 DAY TRIAL // Right after the beginning of the year, and after the official announcement of Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU, AMD released two new quad-core SKUs, the Phenom II X4 840 and the Phenom II 975 Black Edition, and now, two weeks later, boxed parts of the two chips are nowhere to be found in the US.
Officially launched on January 4, the Phenom II X4 840 is a midrange processors and the first Phenom CPU without an L3 cache memory, making it similar to the company's Athlon II models.
The quad-core chip is clocked at 3.2GHz, features 512 KB L2 cache per each core (2MB in total), DDR3 memory support, 95 Watt Thermal Design Power, and a standard set of integrated CPU features, including SSE3 extensions and Virtualization technology.
Its older brother, the Phenom II X4 975BE is the company's new flagship model and comes clocked 100MHz higher than its predecessor, running at an impressive 3.6GHz.
In addition, the CPU features an unlocked multiplier, 6MB of L3 cache, and is fabricated using GlobalFoundaries' 45-nanometer SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology.
In our review of the chip, we found it to be a good upgrade option for owners of AM2+ and AM3 motherboards, as it manages to offer more than enough processing power for most tasks, while also featuring decent overclocking potential.
However, its biggest enemy was its price, as the chip is only $5 cheaper than a six-core AMD Phenom II X6 1075T CPU.
In the last couple of years, AMD didn't have such retail problems as their chips have usually reached the market right when they were introduced.
Furthermore, the Phenom II X4 975BE processor that got to us for our review, did so more than a month in advance of its official launch, suggesting there wasn't any shortage of chips on AMD's part. (via CPU World)