Although they seem still quite fresh, AMD's Socket AM3 Phenom II processors have been on the market now for two and a half months and although the Phenom II X4 810 hasn't been too spectacular the Phenom II X3 720 BE has been a hit with a higher default clockspeed and an unlocked multiplier at a great price. However, at the high-end AMD still has had the Phenom II X4 940 Socket AM2+ processor at the top running at 3GHz. That is until now as AMD now has a Socket AM3 processor as their flagship platform, the AMD Phenom II X4 955.

In case you have forgotten or haven't been keeping up, AMD's AM3 processors will work fine in Socket AM2+ motherboards. AMD has been heavily pushing the lifespan of their Socket and architecture, something which Intel can't lay claim to leaving the Socket 775 market for dead and splitting up future platforms into two markets, the LGA 1366 and LGA1160 which means more motherboards to buy and less backwards compatibility.

There are actually two new processors AMD is launching today, the Phenom II X4 955 and 945, both Socket AM3 processors with 125W TDP rating with the 955 running at 3.2GHz and the 945 at 3GHz. The 955 is 200MHz higher clock than AMD's previous best, the 940, and both run at a HyperTransport bus speed of 2GHz. The 940 ran at 1.8GHz. The chips feature 64KB of L1 cache per core, 512KB of L2, and 6MB shared L3 cache on top. As with all Phenom II's it is built on AMD's 45nm DSL SOI process which seems to be maturing to release a 3.2GHz processor

So not much is new other than Socket AM3 processor being AMD's best now. More so what's interesting is the software AMD has to go with Phenom, AMD Overdrive 3.0 beta should be out with this processor or if not on the way soon. It allows for custom profiles for say focusing on overclocking two cores for programs that only use two cores and lowering the other two cores to save power and maximize those cores. There are a number of built-in profiles and you can also add your own. We didn't get a chance to test this but we did lower the third and fourth core as low as possible to see if it effected our max overclock of a single or dual core which unfortunately it did not. To skip ahead a bit, 4GHZ is where we topped out, four cores or one core.

AMD also have updated AMD Overdrive with what they call Black Edition memory profiles for DDR3 memory.This will verify your RAM against an online database and adjust it for the maximum values. Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately the only Socket AM3 board we had in house wasn't quite stable with the 955 so this is another feature we'll have to look at later on. It is good to see AMD focus on the enthusiast and we recommend all owners of AMD CPUs check out Overdrive as it is great software.

Since not much is new let's move onto the technical specifications.



NEW Phenom™ II X4 Processor Specifications:
Model Number & Core Frequency: X4 955 Black Edition = 3.2GHz
Model Number & Core Frequency: X4 945 = 3.0GHz
X4 955 Black Edition OPN: TRAY OPN# HDZ955FBK4DGI
X4 955 Black Edition OPN: PIB OPN# HDZ955FBGIBOX
X4 945 OPN: TRAY OPN# HDX945FBK4DGI
X4 945 OPN: PIB OPN# HDX945FBGIBOX
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 processor)
L3 Cache Size: 6MB (shared)
Total Cache (L2+L3): 8MB
Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller *
Memory Controller Speed: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
Types of Memory Supported: Unregistered DIMMs up to PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz)

HyperTransport 3.0 Specification: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)
Total Processor-to-System Bandwidth: Up to 37.3GB/s total bandwidth [Up to 21.3 GB/s memory bandwidth (DDR3-1333) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)]

Up to 33.1GB/s total bandwidth [Up to 17.1 GB/s memory bandwidth (DDR2-1066) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)]

Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 in Dresden, Germany (formerly AMD Fab 36)

Process Technology: 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2
Approximate Transistor count: ~ 758 million
Max Temp: 62o Celsius
Nominal Voltage: 0.875-1.5V
Max TDP: 125 Watts

*Notes:
Black Edition processors support software-selectable increases to memory controller, HyperTransport, DDR3 and CPU core frequency

MC configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes
For DDR3-1333, AMD Phenom II supports 1-DIMM-per-channel @ 1333MHz

 

 

 

 

 

Here is our AMD test system.

Mother Board	Asus M3A78-T
Memory	Corsair XMS 6GB
Hard Drive	Western Digital SE 16 750GB
Case	Tsunami Thermaltake
Display	Samsung SyncMaster 30"
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon HD 4850

Here is our Intel test system for Penryn.

Mother Board	Asus Striker II Formula
Memory	Corsair XMS 6GB
Hard Drive	Western Digital SE 16 750GB
Case	Tsunami Thermaltake
Display	Samsung SyncMaster 30"
ATI Radeon HD 4850	ATI Radeon HD 4850

And our Core i7 system.

Mother Board	Asus P6T
Memory	Crucial 6GB DDR3
Hard Drive	Western Digital SE 16 750GB
Case	Tsunami Thermaltake
Display	Samsung SyncMaster 30"
ATI Radeon HD 4850	ATI Radeon HD 4850

 

 

Our test OS was Windows Vista 64-bit SP1. ATI Catalyst drivers were the latest from AMD at version 9.4. V-sync was disabled for all benchmarks as well as C1E and Cool 'n Quiet.

 

 

We'll start with UT3 which is the most popular graphics engine on the market and supports four cores. The Phenom 995 shows pretty much where we expect it improvement over the 940.

 

 

Crysis only supports two cores and as such the Phenom II 720 beats the Phenom II 810 in addition to the Q8200. Core i7 also sees no real boost with the Phenom II 955 basically performing exactly the same as the more expensive platform.

 

 

3DMark Vantage is dominated by the i7 but this is a synthetic score. The Phenom II also blows away the Penryn Intel quad core.

 

 

 

We decoded an 11 minute deleted scene from a DVD into QuickTime format for playing on iPods. The Phenom 955 gets about a good extra 20 seconds from the 940.

 

 

Valve particle benchmark tests how well processors handle rendering tons of particles on screen with multiple processors. The Phenom 955 again does about 10% better.

 

Valve Map creation renders a Valve map again we see similar performance from our other general performance benchmarks.

 

World in Conflict is a popular real-time strategy game with an intense engine. The 955 blows out the 940 here and Penryn.

 

Cinebench also uses all four cores and we see results that reflect that in our benchmarking.

 

 

Similar pattern in 3D rendering with Pov-RAY.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMD has improved on their 45nm process to release 3.2GHz part at retail and it shows in our overclocking, hitting 4GHz with 1.55v. We wouldn't say this was 100% stable but 3.9GHz was much more so. For comparison, the 940 hit 3.9GHz top on high-end air.

 

	Idle	Load
Phenom II X4 955	107W	182W
Phenom II X4 940	104W	180W
Phenom 9950	122W	195W

Conclusion:

Phenom II continues to get better and faster and the Phenom 955 and 945 are great additions to the AMD lineup. When it comes to rendering and tasks that can take advantage of Hyperthreading, AMD has a tougher time but when it comes to game and tasks for most people, AMD offers much more value in a much less expensive but robust platform full of options and tweaking for enthusiasts such as unlocked multiplier at a low entry price and AMD Overdrive software. Phenom was tough to recommend, Phenom II has none of these issues and with the 940 chip showing up at under $170 at a number of e-tailers lately that's a steal. Great job with Phenom, and we can't wait to see how the six core Opteron CPUs work out.

Pricing:

You can get the Phenom X4 810 for $185 and we don't see any X3 720 CPUs out yet but we're sure they'll turn up soon.

Score: 96%