Product: AMD Phenom X4 9600
Price: 294.99 @ NCIX
Availability: 2-3 Weeks



Introduction

It's finally here. It's quite possibly the biggest launch ever. Today marks the official release of AMD's Spider platform. We've had the privelege of taking an early look at the performance of a Phenom X4 9600, along with a Gigabyte premium motherboard featuring AMD's new high end chipset, and we've partnered them up with an HD 3850 graphics card. With a CPU, a chipset, and a GPU all launching at the same time, it's no wonder it's been one of the most speculated-about events over the past year.

Last time AMD launched a new platform, its reception was lukewarm. AM2 offered no performance advantage over S939, and indeed many S939 users felt they were being left out in the cold because any upgrade paths were taken away from them by AMD's move to quickly phase out DDR-compatible CPUs. This time we're hoping things will be a little different. A big helping factor is the fact that AMD has promised that Phenom processors will work both in AM2+ (790FX) sockets, as well as AM2 sockets. This will however be dependent on the board's VRM design and the vendor providing a BIOS update.