Roughly 29 months ago now AMD would have been pretty happy with the way things were going. This is because at that time the Athlon64 X2 were giving the Pentium D processors a very hard time. However the 27th of July 2006 turned out to be a significant milestone for Intel as this was the official launch date of their Core 2 Duo processors.

From that point on the Athlon64 X2 processors were no longer sought after, as everyone went Core 2 Duo crazy. Intel continued their assault with a quad-core version early in 2007 called the Core 2 Quad Q6600, which remains one of the most popular processors today. AMD was left desperate for something new, something much faster, that could compete with the Core 2 range.

Unfortunately what they delivered in late 2007 was not the answer, but it had to be because there was nothing else coming within a 12 month window. Although the initial B2 stepping of the Phenom processors did suffer from a bug, this was later corrected in 2008 with a second revision. The Phenom X4 and X3 processors based on the B3 stepping have been around for roughly 9 months now and they have allowed AMD to make a slight recovery.

Still the future looks bleak, as Intel just released their most impressive achievement to date, the new Core i7 processor series. The Core i7 processors, which were officially released in November 2008, make even the most powerful Core 2 Quad processors look average in terms of performance. For now at least the new Core i7 series is far too expensive for most users to even consider, so Intel will continue to rely on sales of their Core 2 processors.

This means for now at least, AMD can get away without an answer to the Core i7, leaving their focus on existing Core 2 Quad processors. Therefore AMD has been working hard on a second revision of the Phenom II that can comfortably compete with the Core 2 series, while being able to significantly undercut the Core i7 series at the same time.

There have been a few significant changes to the specifications, most notably the core operating frequency and L3 cache have both been significantly increased. The flagship processor, being the Phenom II X4 940, now operates at 3.0GHz while the L3 cache has been boosted from a 2MB capacity to 6MB. Another important change has seen the Phenom II X4 go from a 65nm design to a 45nm design process, reducing the die size and improving thermal output.

AMD is also now claiming that the Phenom II X4 processors will provide users with a great deal of overclocking headroom, much like the Core 2 processors. Overclocking is something that the original Phenom processors have really struggled with, which ultimately hurt their value. Speaking of value, AMD has stated that the flagship model will cost just $275 US, making it cheaper than the cheapest Core i7 processor available.