It isn't news that Phenom II X4 would be released by AMD, on January 8 2009, but that the company would only start taking orders from channel vendors from that date onwards, meaning that Phenom II X4 would face only a paper-launch by the company on that date. A paper-launch is the state where the product is officially launched by the company, but isn't ready with the retailers for you to buy.

Sources tell OC Workbench, that the products will be available with the retailers tentatively by February 4 2009. Retailers could at best, start off with pre-orders in January. The first products to launch, are Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and Phenom II X4 920.

A lot has been said about the launch schedules of AMD's upcoming 45nm desktop processors over the last fortnight. While the company itself slated its 45nm desktop CPU range to kick-off on January 8 2009, skeptics think otherwise saying it could take longer for AMD to have sufficiently stocked up inventories in retail channels.

HKEPC compiled a list of tentative order availability. time-frames for the 45nm CPUs sourced from PC manufacturers, which shows that the company launches Phenom II X4 940 on Jan. 8, while most of the product launches are concentrated in the months of February and April, 2009. Starting those months, channel vendors will be able to place bulk orders for those processors, to stock up inventories. Also pictured is the die-shot of AMD Deneb, and a picture showing the differences between the AM3 and AM2+ pin-grids (AM3 on the leftHS, AM2+ on rightHS).

Intel plans its own public demonstration of the overclocking capabilities of the Core i7 processors. This, in response to rival AMD achieving an overclock of well beyond 5.00 GHz, and booting at speeds above 6.00 GHz. The engineers at Intel reportedly carried out a large-scale binning of Core i7 processors, to cherry-pick the best performing part. The scale of binning could well be best of 100,000 units.

A chief engineer at Intel, Francoise Piednoel expressed his reservations regarding the 6.00 GHz overclocking feat AMD carried out with its upcoming Phenom II X4 processor last week, saying that the overclocking capabilities of the Phenom II X4 demonstrated do not reflect those of release-grade products, and cannot be replicated in a real-world setting. AMD may have disabled several sensors on the cherry-picked chip used in its demonstration, which facilitated that overclock. In response to this, Intel would be disabling the same sensors, in its special demonstration chip. The demo could be held at CES 2009. The professional overclocker chosen to achieve this feat would be none other than FUGGER from XtremeSystems. FUGGER could be set the task of taking the most desirable, binned Core i7 965 Extreme Edition chip all the way up to a stellar 7.00 GHz, if all goes well.

AMD would be releasing its desktop 45nm CPUs, starting with two models under the Phenom II X4 banner. At this point in time, there is a great deal of uncertainty about when AMD plans to stock retailers with the new CPUs. The company's own roadmaps pointed out to a Q1 2009 launch, with several sources reporting then, that an early January launch was likely, but now it seems unlikely according to sources, who suggest these processors to stock up in March or later.

Meanwhile, a slide showing what looks like the the company's performance projections for the Phenom II X4 940, made its way to Expreview. The Phenom II X4 940 quad-core processor (Black Edition variant) would serve as the company's flagship desktop processor in the months to come, until it gets a proper AM3 refresh, and taken over by Phenom II X4 945. In the slide, the Phenom II X4 940 is pitted against two seemingly mainstream quad-core processors by Intel: Core 2 Quad Q9300 and Core 2 Quad Q9400. A percentage comparison in the gaming performance across some games and 3DMark06 is shown.

AMD has reportedly slated two models of its Phenom II series processors for January, 2009. According to Greek website hwbox.gr, the company will be launching two high-end processors from the Phenom II X4 series, on the 9th of January. Details of these processors available at this point in time are:

• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition (HDZ940XCGIBOX), 3.00 GHz, Socket AM2+, 8 MB cache (2 MB total L2 + 6 MB L3), 125W TDP.
• AMD Phenom II X4 920 (HDX920XCGIBOX), 2.80 GHz, Socket AM2+, 8 MB cache (2 MB total L2 + 6 MB L3), 125W TDP.

There is no word on the prices, at this point, though they are expected to be "much lower" than those of the Intel Core i7.

Following the startling revelation by AMD, on just how much overclocking headroom its upcoming Phenom II processors offer, the company is on course for the announcement of the AMD Dragon enthusiast desktop PC platform. The AMD Dragon platform consists of a Phenom II X4 processor and Radeon HD 4800 series based graphics setup running on a 7-series chipset based motherboard. Earlier, a slide confidential to its channel partners was leaked to the media, showing up to 280% increments in gaming performance over its predecessor, the AMD Spider platform. Legit Reviews took a quick snap of the platform logo for AMD Dragon, showing a dark dragon with red glowing eyes holding the AMD Fusion badge. It also reveals the company's slogan for the platform: "Fusing technology with strength." Throughout the product launch phase for its 45nm Opteron processor, AMD has been largely conservative about its performance expectations, though with its desktop variants, the Phenom II series, AMD has been a little enthusiastic off late, advertising it as something "Beyond Expectations". It remains to be seen as to how far the company lives up to delivering to all the hype that has been created so far.

During an event by AMD held at its facility in Austin, Texas, the engineers took an engineering sample of the unreleased Deneb core based Phenom II X4, installed a copper-pot for liquid nitrogen cooling, and dropped the operational temperature to -185 °C. They then jacked up the vCore to 1.90V, to facilitate a clock speed of over 6.00 GHz!

At this point the exact frequency isn't known. Cameras weren't allowed at the event, and so no clear pictures were taken. Earlier the company had released slides to its channel contacts, telling that Phenom II would overclock very well, and 24x7 overclocks beyond 3.60 GHz on air didn't sound unreal. At the same event, AMD showcased Deneb chips doing 4.00 GHz with air-cooling (with vCore set at 1.6V).

AMD would be releasing its 45nm silicon-based desktop CPUs, built on the Deneb, Propus, Heka, Rana and Regor cores, to bring out quad-core, triple-core and eventually dual-core processors. AMD has discarded the 5-digit number scheme that was earlier reported, and in its place, adopted a three-digit scheme. The quad-core Deneb chips get a 9xx model number and 8xx number depending on the clock-speeds and cache size, Propus-based chips get the Athlon X4 branding.

Heka-based chips get Phenom II X3 7xx branding, with Rana getting Athlon X3 4xx. Regor dual-core trails with Athlon X2 2xx. It is important to note that AMD seems to have made a critical change to the Deneb core, releasing 2 models based on cache-arrangements. The first kind features a total of 8 MB cache (4x 512K L2 + 6M L3) and one with 6 MB total cache. To learn more about the other cores, please refer to our older article getting into details (here).