Enter The Dragon: AMD Phenom II X4 940

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, January 08, 2009, 12:30 AM EDT

AMD has been fighting an uphill battle on two fronts for the last few years. For a time, fierce competition from NVIDIA, coupled with some of their own problems executing, put the ATI graphics division in a deep hole. And ever since the introduction of the original Core 2 processors, and more recently the Core i7, AMD's processor division has fallen well behind Intel in terms of overall performance.

Starting in November of 2007 though, we got a sense that AMD was slowly, but surely, clawing its way back into the fight. It began with the introduction of the Spider platform, which consisted of AMD's native quad-core Phenom processors, 7-series chipsets, and 3800-series graphics cards. Individually, the components that made up the Spider platform weren't performance leaders in their respective categories, but ultimately the platform proved to be solid, and of course, it was priced very competitively. The introduction of Spider also marked the first time AMD could offer an entire desktop platform consisting only of AMD-branded processors, core logic, and graphics.

As many of you know, AMD hasn't been sitting idle since the Spider platform introduction. The company's chipset division has launched a handful of new chipsets, featuring one of--if not--the best IGPs on the market and a new Southbridge, the SB750, that allows for higher overclocks through the use of ACC, or Advanced Clock Calibration. The ATI graphics division has also been firing on all cylinders lately, having released a top to bottom lineup of GPUs that compete very favorably at their respective price points. AMD also recaptured the 3D performance crown from NVIDIA for a time with the Radeon HD 4870 X2. AMD wasn't going down without a fight.

With the chipset and graphics divisions on a roll, it was time for the CPU team to pull the trigger on something new and exciting, to complete the new platform trifecta. It took some time, but that's exactly what's happening today. The end result is the Dragon platform which consists of new 45nm Phenom II X4 processors, 7-series chipsets, and ATI Radeon 4000 series graphics cards. We've got the goods in house and will fill you in on all of the juicy details...

Enter The Dragon: AMD Phenom II X4 940

Tags: AMD, Processors, dragon, Phenom

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com