So AMD has finally come out and officially launched Phenom.And it's even more disappointing than we expected.The fastest Phenom yet will only be able to muster 2.3GHz, with the 2.4GHzversion not now due until next year.

If the price isright...

At least AMD's expected pricing looks competitive, with the9500 coming in at under £150 and the 9600 at around £180 (inc VAT). That wouldmake the 9500 the cheapest quad-core processor you can buy, with even Intel'sentry-level Core 2 Quad Q6600 still costing over £150.

But it is also the slowest. The first benchmarks show that even the Phenom 9600 is behind the Intel's Q6600, and the Phenom 9700will only narrow the gap slightly.

Sadly for AMD, the company's own Black Edition Athlon 64 X26400+ can trounce the Phenom in any benchmark which doesn't get much benefitfrom multiple cores - particularly games. It runs at nearly 1GHz faster thanthe Phenom 9600.

You used to be able to say something similar about Intel,since the Core 2 Duo was always a bin ahead of even the Core 2 Extreme. But theQX9650 came in at the same 3GHz as the Core 2 Duo E6850, and the QX9770 is already promising 3.2GHz.

Socket tactics

Intel clearly fears AMD so little it has launched its nextCore 2 Extreme the QX9770 without bothering to hand out samples.The 45nm Penryn has so much potential for extra speed in the bank - and this issuch common knowledge - Intel clearly didn't feel the need to prove it withactual products.

Which all looks terrible for AMD - and very depressing foranyone such as myself who proudly overclocked their Athlon FX-55 to 2.8GHz andbeyond. Those were the good old days for AMD, when the joke was on Intelinstead. Even though the Pentium D just pipped AMD to the punch with dual-core,the superiority of AMD's Athlon 64 architecture over Netburst still meant theAthlon 64 X2 was preferable to Pentium D.

Best of all, the same Socket 939 system could (in theory)house an Athlon 64 X2 as an upgrade. This is clearly AMD's strategy with Phenom, which comes in on Socket AM2+. This is backwards compatible with SocketAM2 - although you lose the benefit of HyperTransport 3 and split power planes.

In fact, the next generation of AMD processors using SocketAM3 will remain backwards compatible with Socket AM2. This is because thisprocessor generation will have a built-in memory controller supporting both DDR2and 3. You won't be able to use DDR3 on a Socket AM2 board, but you could stillslot in the processor.

That's a pretty amazing lifetime for a platform. Those whobought into Socket AM2 at launch in the middle of 2006 could still be consideringa processor upgrade towards the end of 2008, when Socket AM3 processors aredue.

If you did go for a Socket AM2 system, the Phenom could alreadymake a nice little upgrade. That is, assuming you can find software to takeadvantage of multiple cores, and which won't suffer from the reduced clockspeed over a dual-core Athlon 64.

But this is where AMD's strategy breaks down. The problem isthat Socket AM2 came out around the same time as Core 2. So most of us made theleap from Socket 939 straight back into the arms of Intel. It was a no-brainer,and AMD fanboys deserted their old favourite virtually overnight.

Unfortunately, as great as some aspects of AMD's new Spiderplatform may be,it really isn't going to win many of us back. Having respect for technology isone thing - and AMD's Athlon 64 was supreme for a couple of years. But it'sreal performance which counts.