series. The promised enhancements in the microarchitecture are expected to push the performance bar of Core i3/i5/i7 processors to a whole new level while improving their energy efficiency. In other words, the Sandy Bridge family is a highly appealing offer, especially as it will be available in a wide price range. With this fact in mind, what might entice a user to prefer an alternative? Well, there is one substantial reason. The Sandy Bridge series does not sell yet. It is only going to be introduced in the first days of 2011 and won’t take part in the Christmas sales competition. So, if you are planning an upgrade or a purchase of a new computer before the next year, you have to choose from what CPUs are available now.Considering this situation, the CPU makers have made some corrections to their price lists and issued new and faster modifications of their older products. For example, we have recently published a review of the new quad-core Intel Core i5-760 processor which is quite able to attract some user’s interest.AMD is even more active than Intel in this respect. They are unlikely to offer a worthy alternative to the top-end and midrange models of the Sandy Bridge series when the latter comes out, so it is most important for the company to improve its market standing right now when the situation is not yet out of control. Today, AMD’s Phenom II and Athlon II series are not among the fastest, but do have a highly enticing price/performance ratio.AMD carries out its aggressive market attack with all means available, the recent price cuts having been but the beginning. Now we witness the second phase during which AMD increases the clock rates of nearly all of its CPU series. The 45nm tech process used for Phenom II and Athlon II having matured, the clock rates can be lifted up without provoking a noticeable increase in power dissipation, so the new models can be quite competitive in their price categories. Besides, AMD attracts customers not only by offering products with good consumer properties but also by developing unique affordable processors like the six-core Phenom II X6 priced at below $300. Intel does not offer a direct opponent to such six-core CPUs, so AMD quite naturally extends this series further.To be more specific, AMD announces as many as six new processors (and three more energy-efficient models are going to be distributed through OEMs) in different product series: