some old dead guy said something that i think is quite fitting for this little piece of news...

Ski bi di bi di do bap do bap
Do ba do bap

-John Scatman

Assuming they target the budget machines, looks like my next upgrade.

Interesting that AMD decided to position their model numbers similar to core i7 offerings, maybe they believe its competing directly with Core i7.. something we don't know perhaps?

I am looking at the Phenom II 2.8 GHz quad core 8MB L2/L3 cache 95W AM3 CPU to upgrade from my Athlon 64 X2 2.8 GHz dual core 1MB L2 cache 65W AM2 cpu.

For just 30 extra watts, I get 2 more cores, 7 more megs of cache, K10.5 enhancements and DDR3 memory support. Plus the cpu will probably be cheaper and less power hungry than both Core 2 and i7 at 4 cores.

First AMD leads in gpus, now it looks like they have cpus to pair with them.

Can't wait for the new Phenom's. Just drop one into my 790FX board.

Could they take on the Penryns clock for clock? I'm going to have to say no still.

By the way, I just noticed something, they will name it Phenom II, so why on earth did they decided to change the naming scheme? They didn't do that on the transition from the Athlon to the Athlon 64, and it worked pretty dam well, everyone new back then that the A64 3000+ Was far faster then the Athlon 3000+.

Matching intel's numbering may or may not be a good move, but history repeats itself.

They did the same match-up back when intel was leading with high clock speeds and AMD needed to find a way to show customers what their design was equivalent to in intel's terms (for example Athlon XP 1800+, "better than a 1.8 GHz intel processor").

They should've stuck with the ludicrous over-twenty-thousand model numbers, those were fierce.

The naming scheme appears to be a hoax.

It is hard to believe AMD would use Intel's i7 CPU model numbers for their own CPUs.