Tuesday, July 1,2008 @ 8:25am
AMD launches 2.6GHz Phenom X4 Black, low-power chips
AMD this morning quietly released new speed grades of its Phenom X4 quad-core processors that include the company's fastest-ever as well as as two low-power versions. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition runs at 2.6GHz and is targeted at hobbyist gamers with a relative freedom to overclock the chip past spec with enough cooling. The processor is otherwise the same as earlier enthusiast chips with 140-watt power use and 512KB of Level 2 cache per core. The new Black Edition ships for $235 per chip in batches of 1,000 and should be available today.
Opposite to the 9950 Black, the Phenom X4 9150e and 9350e run at 1.8GHz and 2GHz respectively and consume a much lower 65 watts of typical peak power. The designs let users run a full four-core AMD system without requiring a high-demand power supply or extensive cooling; they also help push down the floor for quad computing with respective prices of $175 and $195, undercutting most Intel Core 2 Quad chips.