For the desktop, AMD covets the budget enthusiast with 3.2 GHz quad-core

If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a Nissan Z car (I've owned two in my lifetime), you understand the extra feeling of confidence you get from still being able to afford your house, your clothes, and food. They're very solid performers, they look presentable in a crowd full of Porsches and BMWs, and yet their owners are conscientious folk who can also maintain a budget.

Every time I tell the fellows at AMD that I've been a Z owner, they shout back at me, "Well then, you know what we're talking about!" They're hoping that there's a certain niche of enthusiast system builders who aren't all that interested in displaying the measurements of their disposable income in public. For them, on time, AMD released its next version of sensible high-performance: the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU.

The "Black" theme is to give the buyer an image of high-class. It's also perhaps to dim the lights a bit on the whole theme of competition, which is usually what enthusiasts like to do most with their systems. Despite the fact that AMD is now comfortable with clocking its Shanghai series processors above 3.0 GHz -- the 955 is set at 3.2 GHz, and AMD encourages overclocking -- its principal competition from Intel is the sixth CPU down on its most recent price list, well within the upper-middle-class of its product range, and not nearly its best competitor.

At $245 for 1,000-unit quantities (street prices may be higher, though Newegg.com isn't charging a nickel more), the quad-core 955 is priced well below Intel's current $999 premium (in 1K units) for its Core i7 965. AMD is very happy to remind you that you're paying one-fourth the price. But in Tom's Hardware tests published today, the 965 performs generally better -- for example, about 11% better in the 3DMark overall score, and nearly 19% better in the PCMark suite score.
Still, that's not four times the performance; and anyone whose Z car has been beaten in a drag-race by a Maserati, but not by a full body length, knows what it's like to stand toe-to-toe with legends and not feel ashamed.

Today, the Phenom II X4 955 takes its place at the top of AMD's Dragon platform, which features its 7-series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. When AMD premiered the Phenom II X4 series back in January, its goal was to keep its best performing platform components under $1,000. If you're investing in a Core i7 platform, a buyer's component prices put together may end up doubling his investment in the Dragon platform. And AMD's move today knocks $40 off the price of the same 2.8 GHz model 920 CPU it introduced in January.

But today's entry adds a new wrinkle to the equation: The 955 uses AMD's new Socket AM3. This means you can purchase a 955 and drop it into a motherboard to replace the 920, or any other Socket AM2+ CPU. But despite the way things sounded back in September 2007 when AMD announced Socket AM3, you cannot drop a Socket AM2+ CPU into a Socket AM3 motherboard. AMD issued a nasty little warning about this earlier this month.

So what would you really be spending to take full advantage of Socket AM3? Checking today's prices at Newegg.com, we were able to put together a system that includes the 955 Black Edition, Asus' M4A78-E motherboard with AMD's 790GX chipset, Asus' version of the Radeon HD 4890 card with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, a pair of Corsair 4 GB DDR2 memory modules (the Dragon platform does not yet use DDR3), and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB hard drive. That gave us a subtotal of $879.95, which doesn't give us much breathing room for extras such as power supply, case, lights, cooling, and cabling if our aim is to stay under $1,000.

On the other hand, what would our price be for an Intel system that's comparable in performance to the new Black Edition -- not Intel's premium CPU, but something that performs about as well as the 955. Tom's Hardware tests reveal that the closest performer in the Intel category is the 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550, which Intel sells for $266 (Newegg's markup isn't that high at $269.99). And yes, you read right, Intel's 2.83 GHz model is matched with AMD's 3.2 GHz model.

Right now, Newegg is selling an Asus motherboard with Intel's P45 chipset, for $99 after rebate. That more than compensates for the CPU price premium, since with this motherboard we can still use DDR2 memory. I can keep the other Dragon components and still save ten bucks, paying $869.94.

At that point, the question becomes whether I want to go up against Maseratis and lose by a length, or go up against a Chevy Caprice Classic and get beaten by a nose. AMD's new platform components may have the "Black Edition" theme, but until they catch up to Intel in the architecture department, the source of that blackness may be smoke.