Even though there has been no official announcement, two of AMD's eagerly anticipated hexacore Phenom II X6 processors have popped up on Amazon and seem ready to give Intel's Core chips a run for their money. The 2.8GHz Phenom II X6 1055T is currently shipping for just $222, while its higher end sibling, the unlocked 3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090T is displaying a pre-order price of $325. The 2.6GHz 1035T and 3.0GHz 1075T are nowhere to be found yet.
These six core parts are built on the same 45nm process as Deneb and come equipped with 9MB of shared L3 cache. They are expected to be compatible with AM2+ and AM3 boards, presumably after a BIOS update, and have an integrated DDR3 controller. In terms of power consumption, the 1035T and 1090T are both rated for operation at 125W, remaining within this limit when bumping clock speeds to 3.3 and 3.6GHz respectively with Turbo Core.
Compared to Intel's 980X pricing, AMD's six-core offerings cost several times less and are even cheaper than some of its rival's quad cores. Of course, we don't expect them to perform on the same level. The top of the line Phenom II X6 would likely go against Intel's 2.8 GHz Core i7 930, which is a 45nm Bloomfield quad core with a 130W TDP and 8MB shared L3 cache. The Phenom II X6 1055T, meanwhile, could fight it out with the Lynnfield Core i5 750 in the ~$200 price range.