It has been a long time since AMD has been the first name on the lips of a hardware enthusiast. It has been years since AMD graced many of the high-end machines that giddy gamers and tweakers packed around to their local LAN parties. The famed processors were the AMD Athlon 3000+ and higher processors that Intel couldn't come close to touching... back in the day. Things took a dramatic turn for the worse for AMD when Intel launched its Core 2 Duo processor and ever since AMD has been playing catch-up. Today we are looking at the newest processor in AMDs arsenal - the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Processor and are going to put it up against the old-school Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition. We will be following up with a look at some Intel processors to add to the mix, but for today are goal it to see how the Phenom stacks up to the Phenom II when running clock-for-clock. We'll also do a bit of overclocking and see if we can push the Phenom II up to the magical 4GHz.

One thing that I like about the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor is that it comes with a heatsink. When I purchased the Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition, it came in a retail box as well, but without a heatsink. This makes it handy for people who switching Phenom II CPU from a different platform to the AMD AM2+ CPU. Another thing that impresses me is that this top-end CPU is priced at under $250 and an Intel top-end CPU is generally priced over $1000. Granted, Intel still holds the performance crown with their Core i7 CPU, but for the price difference the AMD Phenom II is certainly a bargain. Finally, the thing that I love most about the Phenom II is that it is socket compatible with other AM2+ motherboards. Any motherboard that can handle a Phenom processor can handle the Phenom II. This makes the upgrade path relatively cheap and much more affordable that Core i7 which involves new board, triple-channel DDR3 and a new CPU.

You can read the entire article at BCC Hardware.