3.4GHz stock clock speed makes this the fastest AMD chip EVER both in terms of frequency and in terms of sheer processing power. Today on my blog I’ll be unboxing it.

Phenom II is a lot of things. Performance leader is not one of them. What it is though, is a return to value and competition with Intel’s mid-range at stock, and competition with Intel’s high end when overclocked.

The Phenom II really reminds me of the Barton core. It’s not the fastest, but it’s fast enough at the right price. I did some quick & dirty benchmarks of the Phenom II 940 Black against Intel’s latest and greatest Intel Core i7 just to get a point of reference for cost to performance. Forgive my fail Excel graphs…

So basically with a little bit of overclocking, enthusiasts can get about 90% of the performance of a Core i7 Extreme 965 for a fraction of the cost. Sure you can do it on the Intel side too, but at least AMD is an option again.

I’ve been asked by some of the fellows over at XS to provide proof of my overclocking results with an undisclosed processor (original blog post here), so I thought what better way to launch my new video blog!

Enjoy.

I’ve had a chance to play around with a new processor from an undisclosed vendor, and there might be some other results on the web about these chips doing crazy LN2 and DICE clocks, but what it really comes down to for the end user is what performance HE can actually get out of a chip.

With modest air cooling (TRUE + random fan) 3.6GHz was doable easily with 8 hour quad Prime95 stability, and more than that with the water cooling setup featured above. We don’t know the prices of these new processors (though my crystal ball says they should weigh in under $400CAD).

Processor price is obviously not the only factor. I remember the good ‘ol days when a premium AMD motherboard cost 1/2 of an equivalent Intel one, and that’s what made it such a good value.