In line with CES' doors opening today, AMD hopes to close the gap on Intel with its new Phenom II series processors (codenamed Deneb) which move down to the more efficient 45nm manu process.

To further complement the introduction of these processors is the new "Dragon" platform which comprises a Phenom II processor, 790GX based motherboard and Radeon HD 4xxx series graphics card.

The processors are compatible with current AM2+ boards with Phenom support; all that will be required is a BIOS update. As far as the initial lineup goes, there's two models which include the Phenom II X4 940 with a clockspeed of 3GHz and a 920 running at 2.8GHz, both with a TDP of 125W.

To see if they can do what Phenom couldn't and take the Core 2 lineup head on (it's already safe to assume the likeliness of them overtaking Core i7 is slim to none), check out our full Phenom II/Dragon review here. Further coverage is also now showing up around the web which you can get to via the links below. We'll be sure to update the listing as more reviews show up.

- Hexus
- Tech Report (1)
- Tech Report (2)
- Neoseeker
- Planet3DNow
- bit-tech
- Overclockers Club
- AMDZone
- Hartware
- Elitebastards
- ExtremeTech
- Legit Reviews
- tbreak
- XBit Labs
- PCGamesHardware
- Overclock3D
- Techspot
- Hardtecs4u
- DriverHeaven

So far we have now seen AMD release the Phenom core in quad, tri and dual core variants, slowly phasing out the K8 architecture for all time. And it's about time, as AMD has been relying on this same architecture since 2003 when Hammer was released at Computex.

Today AMD up's the ante in regards to Phenom with some minor changes to the design. We take a look at the Phenom II 940 processor core along with a new platform named Dragon to complement the latest technology.