http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/17796

Ater inroducing the $99 quad-core last month, AMD have introduced a 45W quad-core, the Athlon II X4 605e (2.3GHz). This is lower than any desktop quad-core on the market it. Some tri-cores based on the same core are now as low as $76 (for the 2.7GHz Athlon II X3 425).

They've also cut prices dramatically, probably to compete with Lynnfield. The 3.4GHz 965 BE is now $195, a 3GHz quad-core is $165, a 3GHz dual-core is now $69 for example. These are seriously cheap; you could build a high-end gaming PC for under $450 with the latter.

Also AMD finally made a profit this quarter! Maybe they're not going to go bankrupt.

Good news for budget PC gamers then. I've always bought AMD CPUs as when I'm looking to buy they tend to offer better value for money. If I had more money I might splash out a a cheap quad core.

I'd already read about all of this, other than the price cuts.

These new CPUs are nice, but they need to bring on the hexacores, those are what I want!

Do you have a use for them? If so you can get a Socket F motherboard for under $300 and a cheap hex-core for $455.

I'm soon going to upgrade my computer with a new motherboard and processor.

Just wondering, how fast are these quad-cores really?

Mostly for purposes of e-penis, I suppose.  But when DX11 starts being used more (and I pick up a 5870), the extra cores will start to matter more for gaming as well, there are other things that do benefit from more cores.

I have an AM3 motherboard, so getting a Socket F one would be a waste of money... and you know as well as I do that when they launch the Phenom II X6s next year (assuming that's what they'll be called), they probably won't break 250-275$, more than likely.

A 3 gz quad? That's like... almost as powerful as teh cell ;D

Ok so is there a single GPU I can get to run crysis on max? (Ultra high 60 fps X16 AA)?

Is CPU even the bottleneck in most rigs?

Edit: Oh, GPU, nevermind

Well, you can't really make direct comparisons like that, since the Cell's completely different from a standard multi-core CPU, and moreover, it has a different architecture, so 1 GHz for a Cell might not necessarily represent as much for a Phenom II, for example.

And it depends on the resolution... but for 60 fps, in general, I'd imagine you'll need to Crossfire or SLI.

Also, looking at that list... it looks like they've cut back their line-up substantially.  Only one Phenom II X3, and no more Phenom II X2s either.  That's unfortunate, they're great value chips. =\

What is the difference between these Athlon II and Phenom II quad-cores in performance then? Should I buy an athlon II or Phenom II for almost twice the price? Is it worth it?