AMD Launches Phenom II CPU, Its Fastest Yet
AMD is positioning Phenom II in between Intel's Core 2 Quad and Core i7 offerings. Phenom II chips are available in two versions, the X4 920 and the X4 940 Black Edition, which compete tit-for-tat against Intel's highest Core 2 Quad CPU frequencies at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, respectively.
AMD Phenom II CPUAMD bumped the shared L3 cache of the Phenom II processors up from 2MB to 6MB, giving each CPU a total cache of 8MB. L3 cache serves as a shared memory space for the cores to draw from. Increasing the amount improves the CPU's ability to pull data from this faster memory space instead of having to issue slower requests to the system's main memory. The move puts Phenom II processors right in the middle of Intel's Core 2 Quad lineup for cache size, but the result is still short of the 12MB caches found on higher-end Core i7 chips.
Though limited overclocking of the 920-edition processors is available through AMD's OverDrive software, the company is tipping its hat toward the extreme-performance crowd with its Black Edition processors. These CPUs run multiplier-unlocked, which liquid-nitrogen-armed enthusiasts have been able to exploit to frequencies above 6 GHz, surpassing the world record for Intel Core i7 processors, which stands at 5.5 GHz.
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AMD is positioning Phenom II in between Intel's Core 2 Quad and Core i7 offerings. Phenom II chips are available in two versions, the X4 920 and the X4 940 Black Edition, which compete tit-for-tat against Intel's highest Core 2 Quad CPU frequencies at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, respectively.
Though limited overclocking of the 920-edition processors is available through AMD's OverDrive software, the company is tipping its hat toward the extreme-performance crowd with its Black Edition processors. These CPUs run multiplier-unlocked, which liquid-nitrogen-armed enthusiasts have been able to exploit to frequencies above 6 GHz, surpassing the world record for Intel Core i7 processors, which stands at 5.5 GHz.
read more :icon_arrowd:
