You heard it hear folks, AMD WILL add the triple core processors to its desktops. They will be branded Phenom and launch in the first quarter of 2008. Now, whats interesting is that there are no plans to change the launch date of the quad core Phenom's, so evidently these will be working side by side with the triple core processors.

And, lets not forget that AMD is really the only processor company in a position to quickly and easily do this. AMD's hypertransport link is the key. Each of the cores on a Phenom class AMD processor has 2 Hypertransport links. So, each one can talk to 2 other cores with zero additional latency. The quad core AMD's will have a bit more latency when accessing data thats in the cache of the 4th core since the request will have to go through a middleman which will slow things down just a bit.

Here's AMD's official video response distributed through youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZOlSC1EkRk

Intel would have a harder time of making a triple core processor, although they certainly could. A die redesign would be required which Intel is certainly capable of although this would take more time and resources.

So, you'll see a boost in benchmark's with this design, but how well will the added core increase everyday performance and gaming? Stay tuned, we'll let you know soon!

I can't wait to hear what you all have to say about this!

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