Meet the twins

Behold the 'Dragon' platform.

Now here's a hint for a contest we are running ;) When AMD launched the initial Phenom processors, they did so under the codename 'Spider'. Spider entailed the AMD 780 chipset, Radeon series 3000/4000 and obviously the B3 generation Phenom processors.

Spiders in the end get squashed or tangled in their own webs, and today we'll see if that will happen, making the Spider platform obsolete that is. The Dragon platform is the infrastructure that is the AMD 790GX/FX chipset, Radeon 4000 series graphics cards and thus the new Phenom II series processors.

MSI 790FX motherboard with a Phenom II processor seated

The Phenom II X2 550 BE

Today we'll be testing two new processors. One is actually an Athlon II processor, the other one a dual-core Phenom II processor. Let's have a look at that Phenom X2 550 Black Edition first.

The newest dual-core flagship product will be the Phenom II X2 550BE, this processor will run at 3.1 GHz with a full 2.0 GHz HT 3.0 speed at a voltage of 0.875 to 1.5V and comes at a slightly improved 80W TDP (peak wattage), these processors are Socket AM2+ and AM3 compatible. The processor packaging is Socket AM3, thus supporting DDR3 memory.

• Model Number & Core Frequency: Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition = 3.1GHz

These Phenom II parts as explained are based on AMDs 45nm silicon on Insulator process technology. Phenom II dual-core processors feature a total 1MB of L2 cache; 512KB per core.

A slight change is the L3 cache. Phenom II has 6MB L3 cache shared among the cores as a buffer. Most Phenom II processors have 8MB and only a few (810) have 6MB. The reality is though, 6MB L2 cache is a lot for a dual-core processor.

Since this dual-core processor has 6MB L3 cache as well, it's safe to assume this is a Phenom II X4 processor with two cores disabled.

Again, for a dual-core processor to be able to exchange data in-between the two logical cores with 6 MB of cache... well that is just a lot. Here's an overview:

• L1 Cache (instruction + data): 128KB x2 (64KB + 64KB for each core)
• L2 Cache: 512KB x2 (dual-core)
• L3 Cache: 6MB Shared L3

L3 is where the magic happens though and is probably the reason for Phenom IIs success. Well that and the 3.0~3.2 GHz clock frequencies of course. Hey, wanna see what the processor die looks like?

AMD Phenom II X4 die, we assume the same die is used for the new X2

Approximate transistor count: ~ 758 million (!). But let's rack up the processor line in order to get a better perspective of differences.

So let's recap a little on what the advantages of Phenom II are over Phenom I:

• Much higher clock frequencies. 3.0 GHz plus a lot of tweaking headroom (we reached 3.8 GHz stable).
• Significant cache changes - 6MB L3 + 1MB L2.
• DDR2 and DDR3 compatibility on AMD 790 FX/GX chipsets.
• Clock Multiplier Control on AMD Phenom II Black Edition Processors. Processors with Clock Multiplier Control unlock system clock multipliers on motherboards supporting this feature. Tune performance with clock multiplier control on motherboards that support customized processor settings.

The Athlon II X2 250

We will also test another processor release today, the Athlon II X2 250.

Now there is a good reason for the change in utilizing the old Athlon naming schema here, as on many levels this processor is rather different from Phenom II and hints to the Athlon architecture. However make no mistake, it is based off the new Phenom II design, yet different. You probably might have heard about it in the past already, this is the new Stars (K10 Regor) micro architecture.

Let me try and explain the differences really simply. Both processors released today adopt 45nm technology with AM3 interface, supporting DDR2 and DDR3 memory. It all boils down to cache though as there are some major changes to be found there. Here's a chart, have a looksy and compare. 

The major difference between the Phenom II X2 and Athlon II X2 is to be found in the configuration of the cache-memory system. Where the Phenom II X2 has a phat 6MB L3 cache, the Athlon II X2 series will not have L3 cache, but instead comes with a larger L2 cache to compensate.

So the L1 cache here is the same at 256KB total L1 per processor, then 1MB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor) and thus the shared L3 cache is gone.

This processor is cheap though, it only costs 87 USD! The processor is based on a Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA), and thus allows DDR3 memory as well.

The TDP for this processor is only 65 Watts.