A couple of online computer stores are offering two versions of AMD's upcoming Phenom II CPUs, ahead of their official debut planned for CES in January. According to the web stores' listings, the two new quad-core CPUs will begin shipping on December 27th. AMD's Phenom II X4 940 quad-core, rated at a 3GHz clock speed, is being offered for $304 by Computers4Sure and $373 CAD ($305) by A-Power. The second chip, the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920, is priced at $271 by Computers4Sure and $317 CAD ($259) by A-Power.
Either chip has 8MB of cache. Initially, the chips will only support DDR2 memory, but AMD will introduce a mainboard chipset over the next few months that will make the CPUs compatible with faster DDR3 RAM.
