There are golden Phenom X4 B3s out there capable of hitting 3.2Ghz on air!

[jas420221]

Interesting. I have not seen any 3.2Ghz Phenom benchmarks to support your statement.

Until I see such a benchmark then your statement is a "theory". You may be correct. On the other hand it is possible that your theory is not correct. There is no way of knowing at this time since no such benchmarks exist.

Although it appears that we might have benchmarks at that speed soon.

You just havent been looking. Im not here to spew FUD or hate on AMD. Its just the way it is. I will go find one bench of phenom vs quad and link it, but the rest is up to you. What Im saying is, what I posted is common knowledge that non penryn quads outperform phenom in the majority of testing at the same clocks. In all fairness there are some benches (Divx encoding, WAV to name a couple) that phenom accels at over Q6600. Overall though, clock for clock the Q6600 is faster at the same clockspeed. The margin may be little but it is there. Throw Penryn on top of that, and that gap increases to something more than a negligable win.

Let me find a review since you wont...http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10427&page=9

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.

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.