14 DAY TRIAL // A week after the introduction of its first desktop processors based on the Bulldozer architecture, AMD is facing supply issues with these chips as its flagship FX-8150 CPU is apparently missing from most of the online stores across Europe.
Nobody seems to know right now why the FX-8150 is in such short supply, but US retailers have faced a similar situation last week when the stocks ran out only a few days after the introduction of the CPUs.
Back then, AMD said that a new CPU shipment is heading to retailers across North America, and availability seems to have picked up in these last few days, even though Newegg still lists the FX-8150 as “out of stock.”
The good news however for European AMD customers, is that retailers have apparently dropped the price of the FX-8150 to about €215 (roughly $297 US), which is €15 less than what they asked for these CPUs after their introduction.
The FX-8150 is the most powerful of the four FX-Series processors the Sunnyvale-based chip maker launched, as it packs four Bulldozer modules for a total of eight computing cores.
The chip has a base clock speed of 3.6GHz and also supports the Turbo Core 2.0 technology that can increase its operation frequency to a maximum of 4.2GHz when only half of the cores are in use.
AMD launched the first FX-Series processors based on the Bulldozer architecture the last week, on October 12, but despite being eagerly awaited by many PC enthusiasts the performance of the chips has disappointed.
In most tests that were run by reviewers, AMD's FX-8150, lagged behind the Intel's Core i5-2500K, a few tests even showing it coming behind a last-gen Phenom II X6 1100T processor.
In order to fix some of these performance issues, AMD is apparently working on developing a B3 stepping of the Bulldozer architecture. (via ComputerBase)