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AMD's nascent Phenom also suffers under the considerable yoke of Intel's Core 2 Quad 6600 pricing, which at £165 for a hugely-overclockable 2.4GHz part is something of a bargain. AMD, though, is pitching its slightly underperforming quad-core part at roughly the same price. The industry needs AMD to survive and succeed yet it's very difficult to make a compelling buying recommendation for a processor that's a year behind its competitor - one who has already moved on to a more-efficient 45nm manufacturing process - is between 10-20 percent slower in most benchmarks, and costs much the same.
Our HEXUS.bang4buck graphs show that AMD needs to lower the pricing of the Phenom 9600 to, say, around £135 before it becomes a genuinely viable option to Intel's '6600, should your usage pattern reflect that of a heavy multitasker. If the Phenom 9600's pricing (£159) stays exactly where it is right now, it's a case of too little, too late, we're afraid.
Bottom line: the new Phenom quad-core processor and 7-series chipset pack in some potent technology. Trouble is, Intel got there first. You need to be better than the competition if coming from behind: AMD's new launches aren't quite that.
EDIT: or just read the link above your last post that covers the exact same thing I just mentioned.
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Since TF2 doesn't make use of any more than two CPU cores, the Phenoms have no advantage over dual-core chips. Clock for clock, Intel's Core 2 chips are faster here; at 2.4GHz, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 outperforms the Phenom X4 9750. And the Core 2 Duo E8400 and E8500 are both well ahead of the Phenom X4 9850.