AMD Phenom II X6 1075T

AMD’s first pair of six-core CPUs, the $285 Phenom II X6 1090T and the $200 Phenom II X6 1055T, both debuted in April 2010, and neither was exactly cheap. But compared with Intel’s sole six-core CPU as of this writing, the $1,000 Core i7-980X (which launched a month earlier), AMD’s offerings looked downright thrifty.

That remains true today with AMD’s latest six-core offering. The Phenom II X6 1075T, at $245, falls right between the company’s two previous six-core CPUs. At those prices, it’s not a surprise that AMD’s six-core chips don’t run as fast as Intel’s ultimate CPU speed demon. What is a surprise, though, is just how good these chips are, considering they're around a quarter of the price. With features like dynamic CPU clock speeds and compatibility with existing AM3 systems, these three chips further cement AMD’s clear hegemony in terms of both upgradability and performance for the dollar. Intel still holds a strong lead in ultimate performance, but in our tests, the Phenom II X6 1075T performed quite close to Intel’s quad-core Core i7-870, which (as of this writing, in mid-September 2010), sold for roughly $40 more.

Socket Type: AM3; AM2+
Number of Cores: Six
Operating Frequency: 3GHz
Front-Side Bus: HyperTransport 3.0
Cache Memory: 9MB (combined L2 and L3)