Hardware Canucks: Benchmarkers Guide to the Phenom II

What we haven't talked about yet is how similar the Phenom II is to the first generation Phenom processor. AMD has gone out of their way to not make upgrades a hassle for users and managed to keep the same socket from the first AM2 day's right up to these new Phenom II processors. So despite the fact that the die underneath the integrated heat spreader is completely re-hauled, the package that the motherboard sees is the same. Thus allowing backward compatibility of Phenom II processors with AM2 and AM2+ motherboards, with perhaps a BIOS flash here or there. Going forward, it is unclear just how compatible the - yet to be released - AM3 processors are going to be with AM2+ motherboards. Word on the street is about an extra pin that may prevent that possibility. What is certain, is that the Phenom II 920, and 940 available today are 100% ready to rock in AM2+ motherboards.


The first photo is of course our Phenom II sample that should be quite familiar to all current AMD owners, on the left is our Phenom II on one side and an X2 5000+ Black Edition on the other. To tell which is which would require some extra sensory ability. They are identical in every possible way. This also makes the package identical to Phenom processors of course. As mentioned, these similarities mean that current AM2+ motherboards are going to be 100% compatible with the new Phenom II processors. In many cases, a BIOS update won't even be required but with some boards, a BIOS update may be needed for any or full functionality. Here are a few charts of motherboard compatibility that we were able to obtain with many other manufacturers having compatible motherboards based on the same chipsets but no press releases announcing a full list.





Sources for these lists come from DFI, Gigabyte, and ASUS web sites. You will want to check each respective web site for whether or not your motherboard is compatible or if you will need a BIOS update in order to run a Phenom II. Again, many other manufacturers have compatible motherboards officially supported already, but we simply presented a few of the bigger lists.