Phenom II X6 1100T BE processor review - Introduction

Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition - more cores at lower prices

AMD sort of has a homerun on their hands with their latest generation six-core Phenom II processors. See, for a really fair amount of money you can purchase a six-core processor. Whether or not you'll actually make use of all the six CPU cores on a regular basis as such doesn't matter to many people. Fact remains, dual and quad core processors are often plenty powerful for today's PC experience. But at just over 200 EUR people simply go for the extra two cores as they know that in the near future more and more applications will make use of all that excellence.

It should be no surprise that today AMD is launching a threefold of new processors, amongst them a new six-core processor. Let's quickly sift through what's released today and then head onward towards the processor we'll test, stress and whip today.

The processors released today are the:

• Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition - 3.7 GHz Turbo Core / 3.3 GHz base (265 USD)
• Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition - 3.4 GHz (115 USD)
• Athlon II X3 455 processor - 3.3 GHz (87 USD)

Piece by piece these products are all going to be very interesting but the six-core 1100T processor is going to be our primary focus in today's article; 265 USD, yeah... that's roughly 44 USD per core and...  this is a Black Edition processor (with unlocked multiplier). So for the money this product will pack some very decent punch as it is clocked at 3.3 GHz, yet can Turbo to 3.7 GHz. And sure, Intel's architecture; core-for-core performance might be faster, but their cheapest (six-core) Core i7 970 3.2 GHz processor starts at 899 USD / 750 EUR.

We'll first have a chat about the processor tested today architecture wise, after which we'll fire off the benchmark test suite at them to see how this 270 USD marvel will perform value for money wise. Hey... it's AMD's fastest six-core processor to date.