Review : AMD Phenom II X6

[demokrat]

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Assalammualaikum W.W

Over the course of a few months in late 2007 and early-to-mid 2008, AMD unveiled their Spider platform, consisting of AMD-built desktop processors, chipsets, and graphics cards, and refreshed said platform with faster processors and graphics cards. Fast forward to today, and AMD is doing the same thing, but this time with the newer, more powerful Dragon platform. It's like D�j� Vu all over again, as they say.



Even though some components have been available for much longer, the complete Dragon platform--consisting of Radeon HD 4000 series graphics, 7-series chipsets, and Phenom II processors--has been around since January of this year, when the Phenom II first arrived. Since the initial launch, AMD has updated the GPU portion of the platform with the excellent Radeon HD 4890, i.e. RV790, and introduced mainstream socket AM3 processors. And today, AMD ups the ante yet again with the highest clocked quad-core CPU to be offered by the company to date, the 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition.



We've got one of AMD's new flagship desktop processors in house for a little benchmark action and have clocked it down to 3.0GHz as well to simulate the performance of the Phenom II X4 945, which is also arriving alongside the 955 BE. Read on for the full scoop...

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AMD Phenom II X4 Processors

Specifications and Features



Model / Processor Frequency: AMD Phenom II Processor Model X4 955 (3.2GHz) / 945 (3.0GHz)

L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)

L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per X4 processor)

L3 Cache Size (shared): 4MB

Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller, capable of being configured for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes

Memory Controller Frequency: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management

Types of Memory: Unreg. DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) and PC3 1333 (DDR3-1333MHz)

HyperTransport 3.0: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4000MHz full duplex

Total Processor Bandwidth: Up to 33.1 GB/s bandwidth

Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) (backward compatible with Socket AM2)

Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 Dresden, Germany

Process Technology: 45nm (.045-micron) DSL Silicon on Insulator (SOI)

Approximate Transistor count: approx. ~758 million (65nm)

Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2 (45nm)

Nominal Voltage: .0875-1.5 Volts

Max Ambient Case Temp: 62 degress Celsius

Max TDP: 125 Watts

*Note: MC configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes

**Note: for DDR3-1333, AM3 boards will support 1-DIMM-per-channel @ 1333MHz