AMD's Spider platform gets the early benchmark treatment
For the first round of benchmarks AMD isn't letting anyone else set up its systems for testing, but that doesn't mean we can't get a decent idea of how the Spider platform's going to perform in the real world. ExtremeTech got to test a machine that AMD set up with a 2.6GHz quad-core Phenom chip, but since those won't be shipping for a few months, they ET also downclocked the chip to 2.3GHz to give us a better idea of what AMD's hit the market with yesterday. The good news is that the sub-$300 2.3GHz chip should perform quite comparatively with Intel chips at a similar price point, but the 2.6GHz hasn't had a solid price set yet, and might have more trouble competing with Intel's GHz-happy line. We won't bore you with the benchmark nitty gritty, and you might want to wait for some true lab-based benchmarks before you make the jump, but it looks like AMD is headed in the right direction.
