With the recently introduced Athlon II X4 645 processor, AMD came at the doorstep of Phenom II X4 performance, and instead of making Athlon II X4 series faster than Phenom II X4 entry models, some re branding came in place. With frequencies above 3.10 GHz, Propus core is starting to match Phenom II X4 performance, at least that of entry models, and although some buyers won't agree with the fact that AMD is selling Athlon II X4 core under the Phenom II X4 brand, it does make sense when you look at the performance numbers. And the fact that, AMD is offering a bargain price for new/old Phenom X4/Athlon II X4 cannot be ignored. The majority of buyers will go with Phenom II X4 840 without knowing exactly what are they buying, but the important thing is that they will get what they paid for, and some. Budget processor, with four blazing fast cores, acceptable power consumption and heat output and with enough horsepower to do every day tasks, gaming, encoding...

Its price of just $102 is what makes this model such a desirable buy for mainstream and budget computers. Aggressive pricing and Intel who doesn't want to play along with AMD's plans leaves the Phenom II X4 840 together with the rest of Athlon II X4/X3 series the only logical choice for a ~$100 buy. Intel at the moment has nothing on the market that comes close to these processors in terms of price/performance ratio, and until entry-level Sandy Bridge models are shipped in much larger volume it's likely to stay that way. AMD's dominance in the budget market has lasted almost from the introduction of the first Athlon II series and by the looks of it, it's going to continue in the future. Last but not least, let's not forget the Phenom II X4 840 backwards compatibility with older motherboards and DDR2 memory. If you were running an old Phenom I/Athlon I series and AM2+ motherboard and need a noticeable but cheap CPU upgrade, wouldn't the new Phenom II X4 840 be the only choice that would cross your mind?