A Brotherhood of Processors

Time is creeping on, and slowly but steadily we are getting closer to Q4 already, in the tech industry we call that silly season as all of a sudden all ODM's bring new or updated products to the market in large quantities, of course to make Christmas sales as interesting for you as possible. Though over the years sales have spread out more evenly throughout the year, of course you can expect new product launches this season as well.

Especially in the graphics card and processor market it's a fact that roughly around the October timeframe there is always something new. Today we feel we start off silly season with AMD. AMD is going to offer a new six fold of processors. Knowing AMD you can expect the updates to cover the entire range from top to bottom, and in the year 2010 while the global financial crisis still hunts us down AMD is going for value products.

So today six new products are launched, and here at Guru3D we'll review three of them. Let's have a peek first as to what AMD has got prepped for you.

Processors & Pricing:

• 3.5GHz (3.0GHz base) Phenom II X6 1075T ~$245
• 3.5GHz Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition ~$185
• 3.3GHz Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition ~$105
• 3.1GHz Athlon II X4 645 ~$122
• 3.2GHz Athlon II X3 450 ~$87
• 3.3GHz Athlon II X2 265 ~$76

We will put to the test the following processors:

• Phenom II X6 1075T
• Phenom II X4 970BE
• Athlon II X4 645

Piece by piece these products are all going to be very interesting as that new 1075T six-core processor is going to be introduced at 245 USD, yeah... that's roughly 40 USD per core (!). Though not a Black Edition processor (unlocked multiplier) this product will pack some very decent punch as it is clocked at 3.0 GHz, yet can Turbo to 3.5 GHz. And sure, perspective -- Intel's architecture; core-for-core performance is a good chunk faster, their cheapest (six-core) Core i7 970 3.2 GHz processor starts at 899 USD.

The second processor that will be tested today is the new Phenom II X4 970BE based on the Deneb die. This will be AMD's fastest quad-core processor to date. Tagged with a price of only 185 USD this puppy is clocked at 3.5GHz and is an unlocked Black Edition processor. And the BEs always offer tremendous overclock potential, BE processors definitely have our preference in terms of tweaking flexibility.

The third processor tested is an Athlon, the Athlon II X4 645 to be precise. This budget targeted processor has its L3 cache cut away but comes with four physical CPU cores and that will ensure that any mid-range PC will be plenty fast. The processor comes with quite a high clock frequency at 3.1 GHz and a price tag of just 122 USD. Brilliant value stuff really.

So that's what we will be dealing with today. We'll first browse through the processors and their respective architecture one by one, after which we'll fire off the benchmark test suite at them to see how they perform value for money wise.

Well, let's start up the review... next page please.