Recently, AMD released its new line of chipsets, the 900 series. In this editorial, we will discuss the high-end model, the 990FX.

As a reader of Hardware Secrets, you are well aware that our goal is to uncomplicate things, so before you continue reading this article, you should be familiar with the terminology so you won’t get confused:

“Bulldozer” is referring to AMD’s new core architecture. It is the most popular name used for the new generation of processors and has become a fairly big deal as it is tuned for performance and scalability and built from the ground up, meaning you should see a fairly long lifecycle. The key focus is on heavily threaded performance – directly competing against HyperThreading (which has been a significant factor to Intel’s dominance in the multi-core market).

The first iteration of Bulldozer-based CPUs will be called “Zambezi” – targeted for high-end desktops – and will introduce enthusiast level eight-core models (FX8000), followed by six-core (FX6000) and four-core (FX4000) models. Relatively speaking, the eight-core processors are projected to offer up to 50% performance increases in multimedia over the current Phenom II series.

Hopefully, that gives you a bit of clarification on the platform. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer you. Read on!