It's a big day for AMD today as they officially launch their latest and greatest desktop parts to market; the highly anticipated Phenom II X6 (six-core Thuban) processor range and a co-inciding chipset refresh in the form of the 890FX.

The highlight of Phenom II X6 isn't so much the fact it comes packed with six physical cores inside, rather how much (or little, I should say) you pay to get hold of this six-core grunt.

While Phenom II X6 was never expected to overtake Intel's new six-core monster (the Core i7-980X) in the performance catagory, it does when looking at the range from a value perspective. The top dog 1090T (3.2GHz) model that we reviewed in full today can be had for less than a third of what you'll pay for Intel's six-core chip at around $300.

890FX boards have been leaking out for a short while already. While Phenom II X6 is backward compatible with the AM2+/DDR2 platform as well as older AM3 chipsets, 890FX brings a nice refreshment in the top-end segment that takes over where the well regarded 790FX chipset leaves off and would be the ideal partner for your new Thuban six-core chip. We will have our first full 890FX chipset review online shortly which will outline new technologies and feature-sets this chipset brings with it.

In the meantime, you can check out a bunch of coverage on the new Phenom II X6 processor family via the below links :-

- Overclock3D
- Hot Hardware
- Hardware Heaven
- Ocaholic
- PC Perspective
- Techspot
- Hardware Secrets
- PCGamesHardware
- Overclockers Club
- Planet3DNow
- Neoseeker
- Toms Hardware
- Legit Reviews
- Hardware Canucks (890FX Chipset)
- Hardware Canucks (X6 CPU)
- Lost Circuits
- Hi Tech Legion
- PureOverclock
- Benchmark Reviews
- Technic3D