After its rather quiet release two weeks ago, the Athlon X2 7750 is now available from several online retailers (Newegg and Mwave).  I was expecting these products to be available right at launch, but that was not to be the case.  Perhaps the Christmas rush was causing the orders to be pushed back a bit?  Regardless, there are now products on shelves and the pricing is hitting right where expected.  Mwave has the 7750 for $79 while Newegg is offering it for $74.99.  Undoubtedly these prices will further erode, and all of AMD’s dual core offerings are very nicely priced.  It is quite likely that the 7750 is AMD’s fastest overall dual core product, beating out the 3.1 GHz X2 (Brisbane core).  It does suck up the power though at 95 watts, but the Phenom architecture and the 2 MB of L3 cache shared between only 2 cores certainly makes it one of the faster gaming processors out there.

Athlon X2 7750s Hit the Street - Processors 2

Reports are pretty consistent that this product overclocks to 3.0 GHz with minimal voltage increases, and users are seeing a max of 3.3 GHz to 3.4 GHz overall with ACC enabled on a SB750 based motherboard and good cooling.  So far, I have not heard if anyone has taken the time to give the LN treatment to the 7750, but the results of that might be interesting.

The lifespan of the 7750 might be limited, as it is a rather large die with two disabled cores just sitting there.  But for the time being it is a seemingly great value for the price, and pairing it with a decent 790GX board certainly seems the way to go.  AMD does not look to have a dual core 45 nm replacement until later in 2009, likely at the end of Q2 at the earliest.

So, users looking to buy a very inexpensive dual core processor without going the Intel route will want to take a good look at this processor.  It might not be the best product for a home/office scenario due to its power draw, in which case one of the 65 nm X2s would probably be better (most office applications barely stress modern dual core processors from either side).  But for the budget enthusiast and gamer, this is likely one of the faster overall dual cores on the gaming market, and the price certainly can’t be beat.