We’re eagerly awaiting the B3 stepping of Phenom and it seems that this will indeed be the last 65nm version of AMD’s new processor series (the B4 stepping seems to be fictitious). The Phenom frequencies have been anything but impressive, and the mean to improve both frequency and performance seem to be a transition to 45nm. According to The Inquirer, AMD will launch its first 45nm desktop processor before the end of the year, which matches what AMD has been claiming for some time and we’ve been hearing from partners. Inq claims frequencies up to 3.2GHz and 6MB cache, which isn’t saying much though.
We sincerely hope that AMD will get its 45nm Phenom processors ready for Q4, because Intel will launch Nehalem and that will certainly put pressure on AMD. The sad thing is that 3.2GHz is not even close to what AMD needs to reach to be anywhere near the performance throne. The 45nm process should reduce power consumption, but power consumption isn’t really an issue here, but also improve yields. Even if AMD is unable to compete with Intel’s fastest processors it might be able to put some pressure on Intel in the mid-range segment and bring out some price cuts.
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