Digital Home Thoughts: AMD unveils quad-core brand for Desktop PC

"confirmed the brand name for its next generation dual- and quad-core desktop processors: Non disclosure agreements, which prevented us from mentioning the brand of the CPUs until today have expired and we can begin using the real name: Phenom. AMD has not released much information today, but at least we can put a little more meat on the bare bones. AMD will call its new desktop processors, based on the “Stars” core, “Phenom.” Ever since the demise of the K6 processors, AMD has relied on brand names with implicit connotations – and Phenom is no exception: Our first guess was that the name was derived from “phenomenon”. Well, we were wrong: AMD representatives told us that the word “phenomenal” is the source of the new processor’s brand. With the introduction of the new brand, AMD will drop the “64” add-on to all of its processors. "

Phenom processors will arrive in three flavors – as dual-core Phenom X2 previously code-named “Kuma”), as quad-core Phenom X4 and as enthusiast model Phenom FX. It also looks like the quad-core CPUs will run at clock speeds between 2.7 and 2.9 GHz and the dual-cores between 2.0 and 2.9 GHz. Power consumption should remain in the familiar range between 89 watts for the X2 versions and 125 watts for the quad-cores. This is very interesting since I was most worried about the amount of power these guys would consume but it looks like that isn't going to be too bad, i.e. my 400W power supply will suffice. Cool, I can start drooling over the 2.9GHz quad core then. :)