AMD Phenom II Pricing Drops +17% / ASRock X58 coming, no typos here...
by Gary Key on January 20, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
AMD reduced their pricing late yesterday on the Phenom II X4 940 from $275 to $235 and the 920 model from $235 to $195. This new pricing scheme takes effect immediately. In fact, pricing at most of the e-tailors already reflect this decrease as we burned a hole in our wallet ordering a few retail samples for upcoming articles. We discovered in recent testing that the Phenom II X4 (could we not have gotten a better name) 940 compared favorably to the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 and the Phenom II X4 920 was a match for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 in most cases.
Intel is now pricing the Q9400 at $213, a drop from $266, while the Q9300 will remain at $266 and essentially be phased out. This means the Phenom II X4 940 will be priced slightly higher than its main competition but lower than the Core 2 Quad Q9550, which drops in price from $316 to $266 - a battle the 940 simply could not have won at similar pricing. The Phenom II X4 920 now competes directly against the Core 2 Quad Q8300, which saw its price drop from $224 to $183. On a clock for clock basis, the 920 is a better value overall than the Q8300 at this point. In the meantime, if you need a really good board for your new Phenom II X4 920 but are on a strict budget, then we suggest this 790GX model from ASRock that is selling for $105 now.
Speaking of ASRock, we met with their top management team at CES and discussed their product plans for the upcoming year. Most of them we cannot discuss yet, but let's just say they are busy designing some very interesting products that will offer excellent price to performance ratios in the coming months. ASRock is not just concentrating on performance and price either; quality improvements ranging from board components to BIOS/Software features to improved customer service are at the forefront of their business directives this year.
ASRock recently delivered their unique N7AD-SLI motherboard that is based on the NVIDIA 740i SLI chipset. Although NVIDIA does not officially list a 740i SLI chipset, it is basically the 730i design utilized in the GF9300/9400 products only without the IG section activated. This design will give current socket 775 users the ability to run NVIDIA SLI in dual x8 PCI-Express 2.0 operation on a board that should retail around $95. We will have a quick review on it shortly.
Finally, ASRock just shipped us their new X58 motherboard, the X58 SuperComputer. The board specifications are located here. In short, the board offers four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (physical) slots that can support ATI CrossFireX and Quad CrossFireX along with NVIDIA Quad SLI, 3-Way SLI, and SLI. Support for the NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer design is provided with three Tesla and one Quadro graphics card. The board also supports 24GB of DDR3 non-ECC unbuffered memory with the current i7 processors, or ECC buffered memory with the Intel Workstation 1S Xeon 3500 processor series. The board should sell for $299 at launch.
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ssj4Gogeta - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
AMD is back in the game and we've already started to the benefits. This is getting interesting.BSMonitor - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
How? Didn't notice any Core i7 price drops. AMD released an obsolete processor for AM2+ fanboys. Intel is clearing the 1y/o penryns out of the warehouses.More accurate is that we are back to the days of AMD competing against the Celeron! Whoo hoo! "But what a Celeron !"
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - link
AMD still have nothing to compete with the i7's, so why should Intel bother cutting their prices?crimson117 - Friday, January 23, 2009 - link
Because not everyone wants to pay the premium for an i7. People who want to pay $600+ for cpu/mobo/ram will buy an i7 system, because it's the best for $600.But most people have lower budgets than that. So intel needs to remain competitive at $300 for cpu/ram/mobo, or else AMD will dominate that middle-budget-market.
SlyNine - Friday, January 23, 2009 - link
We're just to spoiled today. Not to long ago buying the latest and greatest costed 1500$ for the CPU.In terms of RELATIVE performance for today's CPUs, then considering the overclockability. The I7 920 is cheaper then the Athlon X2 4200 when it first came on the scene, and has a 1ghz overclock potential with a decent HSF.
I'm glad AMD has something to compete with the C2Qs, but I'm wishing big time they could release something that can take the performance throne.
WillR - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
The latest and greatest still is a $1500 part. Just go check the price on a QX9770/QX9775. Actually, the newest 6 core Xeons are $2400.If we're spoiled about anything it's quality of entry level bins... Oh wait, we've been there before too, Celeron 300A. 50% overclock potential. Did the 300A cost $300 when it was the new rage? Then there were the AXIA chips. I want to say I remember paying about $140-150 for mine. And I think I heard something about a Q6600 that came out 2 years ago that overclocked pretty well. Just saying the i920 overclocking well is nothing new. The rest is just Moore's law.
As for the intro price of the Athlon X2's ($537 for the 4200, $1001 for the 4800), well that just says something about what AMD did when they were clearly on top. They gouged the hell out of people wanting the best when they could get away with it. A $300 price bump for an extra 200mhz and another $200 hit for 512kb more L2 cache?
OCing seems to be a lot more prevalent than it was a few years ago. I'm just curious how do companies feel about the extra RMAs from it? Or do the built in thermal protections prevent it from destroying chips as often these days?
I'm with you on AMD. They need to step up with something good. They just might be out of the game in a few years if they continue to burn through cash like they have been lately, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.
Einy0 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Consider the $300 MB for an i7. Then the price difference of DDR3. This sets the prices of i7 to compare more with Extreme Edition Processors.The0ne - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Exactly. Price and Quality of the X58 motherboards are what's keeping me from building a i7 system now. Phenom prices all around are attractive for most build-your-own consumers though. For now the i7 setup is just too much and dare I say in a different market altogether.Calin - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
This is bad for AMD, but good for us consumers. It's also bad for Intel, even though Intel is much more able to withstand their part of the price war