AMD officially rolled out its first 45nm CPUs just weeks ago. The Shanghai processors are quad-core chips aimed at PC servers.

Archrival Intel Corp. already rolled out its second-generation of 45nm chips, starting with desktop versions released in mid-November. The Core i7 CPUs are Intel's first to use an AMD-like architecture of having on-board memory controllers and high-speed processor interconnects.

The AMD Phenom II chips provide up to 20 percent improvements in performance over the original 65nm Phenom CPUs which ran at up to 2.6 GHz. The boost comes from faster data rates, doubling of total cache, improvements in instructions per clock and use of DDR3.

AMD is positioning its parts as having roughly similar performance to Intel's latest desktop chips at significantly lower costs.

"This will be a great spoiler product, well positioned against Core i7," said Simon Solotko, senior brand manager in AMD's desktop division. "There's no good reason to spend hundreds of dollars more on a platform," he added.

AMD is pricing the 3.0 GHz Phenom II for $275 and a 2.8 GHz version for $235. The chips are expected to appear in systems at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The competing Intel Core i7 chips include the 965 Extreme Edition, a 3.2 GHz part with 8 Mbytes L3 cache aimed at enthusiast systems and costing $999 and a low-end 920 part running at 2.66 GHz and selling for $284. They are already shipping in several OEM systems.

The CPUs initially come in versions supporting the company's AM2+ socket for DDR2 memory. Later this year AMD will ship versions for its AM3 socket for DDR3 memory.