HP Begins Selling PC With AMD Quad-Core Phenom Chip

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has begun selling systems based on the AMD quad-core Phenom processor at Wal-Mart, according to the retailer's website. HP becomes the first top-tier U.S. computer vendor to offer systems using the Phenom processor. Smaller vendors, such as Falcon Northwest and iBuypower, have been offering systems for a number of weeks. The HP M8330F Pavilion Desktop comes with the Phenom 9500 Quad-Core Processor (2.2GHz), a 640GB (2x 320GB) 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard drive, 3072MB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM memory, and Windows Vista Home Premium. The system is priced at $959.99. Other large retailers, such as Sears, are also offering the system. The Phenom 9500 and 9600 processors, generally available now, contain a bug that can cause system instability in certain rare overload situations. The bug can be fixed with a workaround. AMD is also in preparation of a new "B3" revision processors that should fix the TLB bug.