AMD Phenom II X6 1090T and ASUS Crosshair IV Formula

CONCLUSION

 AMD Phenom II X6 1055T and AMD Phenom II X6 1090T

While the new 6-core CPU's won't impress us as much as the Intel i7 980x (Extreme) when it comes to speed, it is clear that AMD is continuing on the path of delivering excellent performance at an affordable price. The AMD Phenom II X6 1055T can be found for about 220$ (Amazon) while the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T will set you back around $300 (Amazon) and it certainly is true that you will be able to build a complete computer system with monitor and everything for the same price as the i7 980x.

The addition of Turbo Core is a interesting move by AMD as it does to some extend help make the CPu worthwile even while we still are waiting for more software that can take advantage of more cores. Games won't benefit of the added cores as much as productivity software for video editing and encoding so if you have a fast 4-core CPU and only intend on gaming you probably do not need to jump to the 6-core CPU's just yet.

 ASUS Crosshair IV Formula

There is no doubt that the ASUS Crosshair IV Formula is an high-end AM3-motherboard. ASUS have been mostly concentrating on the Intel-side with their RoG-boards so it is nice to see them release such an nice motherboard for the AMD-plattform. The motherboard is full of nice features and we are sure we haven't even scraped the surface on all the things we can do with it. It is cool to see that ASUS has managed to make it easy both for the novice overclocker to get a good overclock with the push of a button (as well as the oppoirtunity to try to unlock unused cores) while still offering a ton of overclocking options for the expert overclockers. 

We haven't been given any official price info on this motherboard yet but we have seen it surface on some smaller webshops for around $250 which might sound a lot for a motherboard but which isn't that bad considering what you get.