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AMD Phenom II X4 945 and 955BE processors tested

AMD is trying really hard to get the most out of their processor series. As such nearly on a bi-monthly basis they introduce a new processor, sometimes even two at a time. And that's good, great in fact as it shows that the new Phenom II architecture is working out really well for them.

On that note, AMD today will release two more new processors in the Phenom II processor line. Ever since the release of Phenom II things have been going really well for AMD, yields are good and the processors certainly can clock much higher than I originally anticipated. On air the BE edition processors often can be fairly easily lifted towards 3.6 GHz, so it's not exactly a surprise that we heard about a Phenom II 955BE processor back in march already ... with the launch today.

Yields are good, clock frequencies go up, performance goes up. And that's nice as the Phenom II series processors offer great performance for the money you have to lay down on the table. AMD Phenom series processors are slowly ripening, and are aging like a fine wine (they get better over time).

What is AMD releasing today:

* AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz at a suggested price of $245 USD
* AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz at a suggested price of $225 USD

AMD started its Dragon desktop platform with the introduction of their flagship CPU, the Phenom II X4 940. This processor however, is not compliant with the AM3 socket, and as such does not support DDR3 memory. Based on the 45 nm Deneb core the two processors released today supports socket AM3 motherboards, and DDR3 memory.

Today AMD is releasing two processors in the Phenom II line-up, the Phenom II 955BE and the Phenom II X4 945 processor. Both processors can be considered and positioned in AMDs high-end segment, yet will be priced friendly.

Also a good thing to be very aware of .. these AM3-packaged processors will fit into existing AM2+ motherboards as well. Pop in the latest BIOS on your AMD 790FX/GX DDR motherboard, and you will be good to go as well.

Anyway, good gosh darn it .. I'm already going into detail whilst we still are in the introduction.

For this review we will test the Phenom II X4 955BE processor yet also have a look at AMD Phenom II X4 945 performance. Move onwards to the next page please where we'll startup this review with a technical overview followed by an in-depth benchmark report to see where AMD is with it's fastest processor anno Q2 2009. And sure, though this primarily is a Phenom II X4 955BE review, we include AMD Phenom II X4 945 processor results as well, yeah we like to eat our cake and a little icing on top of it.

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE and 945

AMD

AMD considers the quad core Phenoms to be the first "true" quad core design, as these processors are a monolithic multi-core design (all cores on the same piece of silicon die), unlike Intel's Core 2 Quad series which are a multi-chip module (MCM) design. The processors are on the Socket AM2+ platform.[2]

Before Phenom's original release, a flaw was discovered in the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) that could cause a system lock-up in rare circumstances. Phenom processors up to and including stepping "B2" and "BA" are affected by this bug. BIOS and software workarounds disable the TLB, and typically incur a performance penalty of at least 10%.[3] This penalty was not accounted for in pre-release previews of Phenom, hence the performance of early Phenoms delivered to customers is expected to be less than the preview benchmarks. "B3" stepping Phenom processors were released March 27, 2008 without the TLB bug and with "xx50" model numbers.[4]

An AMD subsidiary has released a patch for the Linux kernel,[5] which it said has received "minimal functional testing", to overcome this bug by software emulation of accessed- and dirty-bits causing little performance loss.[citation needed]

AMD has launched several models of the Phenom processor in 2007/2008 and more recently an upgraded model Phenom II in 2009.[6][7][8][9]
AMD Phenom processor family
AMD K10 Desktop
Quad-core Triple-core Dual-core
AMD Phenom logo as of 2007 AMD Phenom logo as of 2008 AMD Phenom logo as of 2008 AMD Athlon X2 logo as of 2007
Code-named Agena Toliman Kuma
Core 65nm 65nm 65nm
Date released Mar 2008 Mar 2008 Dec 2008
AMD Phenom logo as of 2008 AMD Phenom logo as of 2009 AMD Phenom logo as of 2009
Code-named Deneb Heka
Core 45nm 45nm
Date released Feb 2009 Feb 2009
List of AMD Phenom microprocessors