Hardware Canucks: Benchmarkers Guide to the Phenom II

Gone is the 5 digit naming nightmare and in its place is the three digit naming scheme that is identical to...umm, Intel? AMD has already successfully branded their new Phenom II processors by duplicating the model numbers that Intel has had in place for their new i7 processors for months now. Other models stray from Intel's line-up but the only two processors being released today are the 920 and 940 so we will focus on them. Is this smart? dumb? or just downright cheeky? Perhaps it is all just a coincidence and AMD was completely un-aware of Intel's planned naming scheme...riiiiiight. Here is a look at the taped out processor release as of this point for the upcoming Phenom II processors.

Model	Cores	Codename	Socket	Frequency	L3 Cache	TDP	Release Date
X4 945	4	Deneb	AM3	3.0GHz	6MB	125W	Q2 2009
X4 940	4	Deneb	AM2+	3.0GHz	6MB	125W	01/08/09
X4 925	4	Deneb	AM3	2.8GHz	6MB	95W	Feb 09
X4 920	4	Deneb	AM2+	2.8GHz	6MB	125W	01/08/09
X4 910	4	Deneb	AM3	2.6GHz	6MB	95W	Feb 09
X4 810	4	Deneb	AM2+	2.6GHz	4MB	95W	Feb 09
X4 805	4	Deneb	AM3	2.5GHz	4MB	95W	Feb 09
X4 805	4	Deneb	AM3	2.5GHz	4MB	95W	Feb 09
X3 720	3	Heka	AM3	2.8GHz	6MB	95W	Feb 09
X3 710	3	Heka	AM3	2.6GHz	6MB	95W	Feb 09

So what is Phenom II? Well, from what we have pieced together - since AMD wanted nothing to do with this article - the AMD Phenom II 920 and 940 processors are 45nm quad cores with 125W TDP's. Some confusion has people believing they will have 8MB of L3 cache but we can confirm that our samples are all equipped with 6MB of shared L3 cache with each core getting 512KBytes of L2 cache for a total of 2MB. The Phenom II architecture is based on the original Phenom with many refinements to improve clock per clock performance and allow for higher clock speeds. As the chart above outlines, the Phenom II 920 & 940 are the only two processors slated for release today and clocked at 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz respectively. Later versions of the Phenom II will be released in an upcoming "phased" rollout. These versions will include 4MB L3 cache versions as well as three core X3's and varying clock speeds.


The die shot above to the left is one plucked from PC Perspective and labeled as the Phenom II die. Of course, this couldn't be confirmed by AMD or their web site but we did notice a different die shot on the front page of the Opteron section of the AMD site. In their media gallery section, the Opteron die shots are all the same as the Phenom die shots but the front page die is different, it appears to be the same as the one PC Perspective has posted of the Phenom II providing some level of confirmation that it is in fact the Phenom II die.

As today wears on, we anticipate a lot more information to be released about the Phenom II but up to this point, AMD has been AMD and kept very quiet about further enhancements to the Phenom II architecture. As we have mentioned, this article is not sponsored in anyway by AMD so we have no official information directly from the horse's mouth. Everything we have presented thus far has simply been what has been picked up from the wires. We would like to thank Expreview.com for what little information that we have received about Phenom II.