[Mak213]

A sneak peek given to the press by AMD, showcased their upcoming line of processors known as the "Phenom II".

The Phenom II are AMD's answer to Intel's newest chipset, the Core i7. Hoping to compete in the market with the Core i7 the Phenom II line of quad-core processors will be AM2+ compatible. The first two models to be released will have a clock speed that starts at 2.8GHz. However, one of the key bragging areas for AMD's line of Phenom processors is its overclockability.

AMD claims a 30-40% reduction in power consumption under full load thanks to their transition to a 45nm fab process. AMD has also stated that in addition to the 30-40% power consumption reduction that consumers can expect, they should also expect a 30-40% increase in performance over previous Phenom models.

In a demonstration, AMD displayed the overclocking power of the Phenom II X4, showing it hit 4GHz stable at 1.55v on air cooling with a temperature of 32?C. With water-cooling the CPU broke the 4GHz barrier with a 39?C temperature. For kicks and giggles the Phenom II was shown running stable at speeds higher than 5GHz on nitrogen cooling and even booted at speeds that were higher than 6GHz.

It's too early to say whether or not the Phenom II's can match the power of the i7's as we'll have to wait until benchmarks are released to do so, but the competition seems anything but idle.

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