AMD Phenom and Spider Preview Author:  Jason Jacobs Date:  2007.11.19 Topic:  Other Provider:  AMD Manufacturer:  AMD

Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond:

Amd is launching their Spider series of platforms along with the Phenom. The spider seems like much more of a concept in marketing than a series of platforms but its appropriate for the new processor name and will probably catch a lot of attention.

The Spider segments include:

ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series AMD Phenom Processor AMD 7-Series Chipsets

In theory these three cover consumers desires for a powerful computer, HDTV ability, and gaming. The emphisis is once again on HTPC's and media the experience which should be greater with DX 10.1 cards.

Current AMD chipsets planned include:

• 790FX - Targeted towards the $150 - 250 range
• 790X - Targeted towards the $99 - 150 range
• 770 - Targeted towards the $70 - 100 range

Both of these chipsets include 42 PCI Express 2.0 lanes for future and upcoming graphics cards as well as AMD Overdrive and some motherboards planneed for Crossfire solutions up to 4X configurations. AMD currently offers the only hardware platform with all of the next-gen technology in place (PCIe 2.0 and DX 10.1).

AMD Overdrive allows you to manually control many CPU settings for each individual core. You can also manually tune voltages, bus speed, and even your PCIe clock rate. Enthusiasts look out AMD Overdrive may be responsible for many sleepless nights spent overclocking your rig to the next level! With 3 modes available that range from Novice, to Auto Clock you can be sure you are getting the maximum out of your machine.

See the image to the right for upcoming motherboards which support the new 7-Series chipsets. As you can see the disclaimer at the bottom of the image notes that there may be changes to the model names and possibly even availability of these motherboards after the launch.