The fastest Phenom II may nibble at the heels of Intel's Core i7 on the price ladder, according to EE Times. The site has posted prices for a couple of the upcoming Phenom II processors, and it claims AMD's upcoming 3GHz CPU will launch at $275—just $9 below the volume price of Intel's 2.66GHz Core i7-920.

EE Times goes on to say the slower, 2.8GHz Phenom II will cost $235, which would put it in roughly the same ballpark as Intel's new 2.5GHz Core 2 Quad Q8300. Of course, even the 3GHz Phenom II might not compete directly with any Core i7 for a while. That's because the AMD chip will work with DDR2 memory and much cheaper motherboards than Intel's new brainchild. More realistically, a $275 Phenom II would end up facing the Core 2 Quad Q9400.

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