The processors greatest advantage is price. The X4 920 retails at $235, while the X4 940 Black Edition retails at $275. A motherboard for the platform costs around $120 and memory comes at around $75. Together this is much cheaper than Intel's i7 platform, which has a processor cost of $295 for the i7 920 2.66 GHz model and a cost of $565 at Newegg for the i7 940 2.93 GHz model. It also does not require more expensive DDR3, which the i7 platform does. So while the i7 trumps the Phenom II significantly in performance, this is largely offset by a higher price.