In a much anticipated move, AMD has announced that the Phenom processor is available today for sale. Also, in another announcement, in partnership with the ATI section of the company, the new Spider motherboard platform has also been announced.

The Phenom has 4 cores and comes in either 2.2Ghz or 2.3Ghz flavours initially. It requires the AM2+ socket to really be used to it’s potential, but can also be used with the current AM2 socket – for compatibility reasons – it just means not all of the chip’s new features are available. The Phenom is the first true quad core chip available to the home market. The cores are all on the same die. Intel’s current quad core chips are essentially two dual cores hard-wired together, so there is potential for the chip to not run as smoothly or with the same performance as a true quad core. If AMD have also manufactured this chip to the same standards then the raw speed is probably not going to be a telling factor as to the real-world speed on the desktop. I await some benchmarks on both high-end chips!!

Also announced was the Spider platform. A motherboard chipset and design ethos that incorporates the new quad core CPUs, up to 4 graphics cards – in CrossFire mode – incorporating the new Radeon HD GPU and the new 7 series chipset. All wrapped up into one package, this will be a very formidable gaming platform, and has been quoted by AMD as being a very stable and highly optimised PC Desktop system. [SHOW ME]