Athlon II, Phenom II X2 by the pound

THE ATHLON II X2 AND PHENOM II X2 have been announced for a while and distris have put them on pre-order for going on about two weeks now. Today they’ve finally gone on sale. There wasn’t much secret to it, despite a reinforced NDA that AMD circulated, not to keep a secret, but to match timing to the Computex opening and maximise attention on Day 1, or perhaps divert attention.

However it went, the press has started upping its stories on these AMD processors. Personally, we’ve been sidetracked by an unexpectedly fickle Phenom II X2 that turned two supposedly “dead” cores on and off at will, without so much as asking us. You can imagine it’s been a non-stop attempt at finding out what’s going on...

Our review will be with you shortly. In the meantime you’ve got this rather thorough list of Athlon X2 and Phenom II X2 reviews. In no particular order:

Hot Hardware

Guru of 3D

Xbit Labs

AMD Zone

Legion Hardware

Techspot

Fudzilla

Anandtech

Legit Reviews

PC Perspective

Neoseeker

Overclockers Club

Desktop Review

Hexus.net

Computer Shopper

Benchmark Reviews

Lost Circuits

But not all is about AMD and their new dual-cores. Xbit Labs has a 3-way SLI review showing off some serious 32x anti-aliasing *cough* that should make those jaggies smooth as a baby’s bottie.

Tom’s Hardware pubbed its May System Builder Marathon, in the $2,500 category. That’s a pretty powerful Core i7 system in a micro-ATX shoebox.

Microsoft’s Wireless Desktop 3000 is reviewed at I4U. It’s an affordable BlueTrack/wireless combo with a low profile and very quiet at typing. Stealth typing for those who don’t want to wake up mum and dad...

Asrock’s mobos are getting names more and more like Asus’, which hints that something might be going on. In the meantime, you can check out this Asrock M3A790GXH 128M 790GX-based motherboard. Tweaktown has it.

Legit Reviews rounded up 13 LGA 1366 CPU coolers, that is to say, Core i7 fodder... There’s a $121.98 cooler in there... see if you can spot the beast.

Still bobbing up and down in the wild world of audio, Creative Labs devised a new way to get decent audio in a crappy laptop: the Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook. Thrusted Reviews got it.

Anandtech is knee-deep in something not many sites wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole – servers - but the guys have cojones and did it anyway. Hardcore AMD six-core action. µ