The product in question is the FX-4130 which is a quad-core AM3+ CPU with a clock speed of 3.8GHz. For cache you get 8MB which is probably split into 4MB L2 and 4MB L3 Cache. The TDP (Thermal Design Power) of the FX-4130 is listed at 125Watts which makes it a little more power hungry than some of Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUs that also include an IGPU (the 3.5GHz i7 3770K is only 95Watts). Right now the price is listed at $120 for this unlocked CPU from AMD which puts in line with Intel’s lower end Core i3 Sandy Bridge CPUs (the Dual Core i3-2100 is the closest at $119.99).
AMD had some other news though including a mention that they might be reducing GPU pricing to compete with nVidia. When AMD announced the launch of the 1GB version of the 7850 at a $229 price point we felt that this would not add up to a large number of sales. It seems that AMD might have felt the same or simply reacted to nVidia’s recent 660Ti release and started slashing prices to move inventory out the door. No matter the reason it seems that they are pulling back the margins on all of their upper end cards including a $40 price cut on the 1GB 7850 bringing it down to $190 (which is where we said it should have been at launch). Most of their other high-end cards are also getting a $40-50 price cut as well.
The move could indicate a need to clear inventory to make way for new products or simply to reduce liability at a time when they are having some rough financial times. These could tie in with some of the rumors claiming that AMD could be bought by Samsung or Qualcomm, but we have a feeling that they two are unrelated and highly doubt that either company is looking to purchase AMD any time soon. We do wonder what nVidia’s response will be to this move and if it means that the consumer can enjoy some great deals in the coming months.
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