yay :
Why do all of you hate the phenom so much?
Its not a bad chip, especially for mainstream.
Thunderman took it a bit over the edge but thats no reason to take out your built up anger at a processor. It just sounds like jealousy.
There's something about competition between AMD and Intel, and between ATI and Nvidia, that get's people all out of whack. It's rather silly if you ask me. Intel fanboys loved Netburst and Nvidia fanboys loved the FX series, despite Netburst getting beat by Athlon X2 in benchmarks, and despite the FX 5200 being a lousy card.
Now, ATI and Nvidia are fairly close; both have good products. AMD and Intel are close, both have good products. Nvidia will get their 9xxx series out sooner than AMD's R700, so the gap will widen. Intel will get their next incarnation out sooner than Swift (which might not improve things for AMD, except in notebooks). So it goes.
AMD has always played second fiddle to Intel, but not because Intel's always had the best -- except in bribery, strong arm tactics and marketing; correct that, I mean OEM rebates, restrictive agreements and marketing; which is elegant lying no matter how it's phrased. AMD has always had an uphill battle.
I went Netburst in time for Morrowind only because of Tom's article regarding Athlon XP's frying when the heatsink was removed. I went Athlon X2 over Pentium D because Intel had the spaceheaters and poor performance. Now, I'm sticking with AMD because I just don't like Intel's tactics, though I do like their CPU's.
I don't see AMD's Phenom's being all that much behind a Q6600, and they're in my budget gamer price range. My only issue is how close 45nm is to market. If I owned AMD stock, I'd be upset at Hector Ruiz and AMD's complacency. They did decent native quad core at 65nm but they could have done better quad core at 65nm if they'd stuck two Brisbanes together, despite the fact that a single Phenom core is 17% to 25% better than the equivalent Brisbane.
AMD will probably get their act together by the time it's 45nm, definitely by Swift. Still, I expect Intel to be ahead and Intel fanboys to be bullies on this board. I've seen it before. Fanboys of AMD, Intel, ATI and Nvidia can be bullies and misrepresent the competing product. That's why fans are better than fanboys. It's okay to have brand loyalties and to buy from the underdog, but there's no reason for anyone to ever say that the other company's product is sheer dreck -- except for Pentium D Netburst, that is. That I will call dreck.
If anyone doubts that Phenom's a decent CPU at the price, just compare benchmarks to the Q6600. Close enough considering the price, and the upgrade path for those of us who have AM2 motherboards by companies that got a bios out in time.