AMD Phenom X4 9700 

Indeed, due to a last moment alteration to AMD's launch plans, the 2.4GHz 9700 model reviewed here will not now be available until early 2008.

Intel's competing Core 2 CPU architecture has offered a comparable capability since mid-2006.

At 2.4GHz, Phenom can trail by more than 15 per cent.

Similarly, Phenom's data fetch width has grown from 16 to 32 bytes, enabling it to fetch multiple instructions in a single cycle.

The final static feature is the 65nm silicon manufacturing process.

The extra pair of cores aside, the most significant tweak is the doubling of floating point unit width to 128-bit.

Rather, it's a moderate revision of AMD's existing K8 CPU architecture with the maximum core count taken up to four, plus a range of detail architectural enhancements.

Or will the focal point for AMD's shortcomings simply shift from core count to pure performance?

The only question is, can AMD really afford to sell its new quad-core chips this cheap.

Again, the idea is boosting clock-for-clock performance.

It's intriguing to note, however, that Phenom scales better from one to four cores in the Cinebench rendering test.

Finally, Phenom packs the latest revision of AMD's Cool 'n Quiet power management technology.