Phenom II by AMD

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AMD has launched Phenom II – a pair of quad core processors built using 45 nm technology. The pair includes the 3.0GHz X4 940 Black Edition and the 2.8GHz X4 920. The Phenom II processors are central to another launch by AMD – the Dragon platform for gaming and video processing. The Dragon platform also consists of ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics and AMD 7-series chipsets.

The Black Edition offers an unlocked multiplier and should find takers with the overclocker community. Phenom II offers backward compatibility with most motherboards. A BIOS update may be required to ensure that the company’s Cool’n'Quiet 3.0 Technology works smoothly.

AMD hopes to present Phenom II as a cost-effective option to the Intel Core series of chips. In fact, Phenom II offers features such as an integrated memory controller and HyperTransport interface absent in Core 2 Quad chips.

The X4 920 and X4 940 retail at $275 and $235 for 1KU sets, respectively.

Phenom II features at a glance -

• L1 Cache: 64K instruction, 64K data cache per core (512KB total per processor)
• L2 Cache: 512KB data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)
• L3 Cache: 6MB (shared)
• Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller
• Types of Memory Supported: Up to DDR2-1066MHz
• Packaging: Socket AM2+ 940-pin
• Approximate Transistor count: ~758 million (45nm)
• Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2 (45nm)