The reality of the economic downturn has affected every facet of our lives including the computer industry. While Intel continues to price their CPUs in the $999 price range with little change but a higher clock speed and higher speed QPI, AMD is pricing their CPUs for the mainstream user, with reasonable prices for reasonably performing CPUs. The Phenom II X4 940 CPU is available online for $219, making it price competitive with the Intel Core i7 920 CPU. Performance on the CPU is as expected and AMD is slowly catching up to the Intel platform in speed as in many cases the CPUs are identical in performance but lacking in others. Note that an AM2+ motherboard+ the other components with a 940 are much less expensive than a similar Intel platform. If you want an AM3 motherboard note that this CPU will not work with those as it has two extra pins versus the AM3 platform. In any event I will do a Socket AM3 Phenom II 710 review which will cover the AM3 platform with more detail.

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/...re/1869_1.html

we all know that AMD is selling their CPUs at mainstream prices is because they don't have a high end part which can match Core i7 performance; this has nothing to do with the "economic downturn"