Hardcoreware take a further look at the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. As you can guess by the name, this CPU clearly has Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9550 in its sights as a target. Here's a bit:

Well one thing is for sure - AMD didn't forget how to make a great CPU! Quite the opposite actually - with the Phenom II, they have created a processor that not only hangs with competetively priced Core 2 Quad models, but beats them in many scenarios.

Unfortunately for AMD, it might just be a case of "too little, too late" at least in this price range, and at least for people building from scratch. As we discovered at the beginning of this review, if you are building a brand new system (motherboard, video card, etc) it only costs about $120 more to build a Core i7 920 system (which is just a 10% increase over the Phenom II and Core 2 Quad's budgets).

One major advantage going for the Phenom II is the fact that it will work on a huge variety of motherboards. Everything from AM3, to AM2+, even to some AM2 boards. If you already have an AM2+ system with some fast DDR2 memory, you are just one step away from having significantly increased performance - even better than the Q9550 that way probably way too expensive when you bought your Phenom 1.