We reported a few months ago, AMD’s plan’s to upstage their current king of the hill, the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition, with a processor that pushes the limits of computing even further – the AMD Phenom II X4 965.

The 965 operates at 3.4GHz, the fastest clock speed of any processor currently on the market; though, as we learned years ago with the Pentium vs. Athlon wars, speed is no indication of performance. The new CPU doesn’t bring anything new( aside from speed) to the table;  AMD has just found a way to utilize higher yield wafers, however it does seem that company did do a bit of price shuffling to make room for the new chip. This ultimately means savings for consumer’s willing to work with something natively slower.

The 965 operates with a 200MHz FSB with a multiplier of 17x making for its 3.4GHz clock speed; the multiplier is unlocked which is great news for overclockers. It features the same 6MB of L3 cache, and 2GHz  HT, however, AMD returns to 140W TDP territory with the chip, while the 955 is only 125W.

The processor holds great promise for enthusiasts, it’s higher clock speed is a stronger starting point and the more selective binning should hopefully see more high quality performers finding their way into consumer’s hands.

MSRP for the Phenom II X4 965 is listed at $245USD, roughly the same as the 955 upon release. The 955 took a dive to the sub $200USD range in the past month which is likely where it will stay for now. With Intel gearing up for a monumental Core i5 launch, speculated sometime in early September, AMD may be holding off on any price adjustments until the blue giant plays its hand.

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