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For a very long time, being an overclocker meant owning an AMD CPU.
Cheap prices, good performance, and easy overclocking put AMD as the
favorite son for many overclockers. However, in 2006, Intel
released the popular Core 2 series, and it has put the hurt on AMD
ever since. In 2007, AMD launched the much anticipated Phenom
processor; however bugs upon launch and poor overclocking headroom
did little to bring overclockers back from the Intel camp.
If computing history tells us anything, it is that
while sometimes AMD is down, it is never out. It is with this
spirit that brings us our next review, for AMD has launched their
next generation CPU, the Phenom II. Is this the beginning of
AMD's comeback, or will overclockers be left wanting? Read on
to find out!
Features
The Phenom II X4 Black Edition replaces the Phenom
X4 9950 Black Edition as the flagship of AMD's lineup. As
such, the Phenom II includes a host of enhancements over the
previous generation:
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45nm process geometry
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Larger cache sizes
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Cool'n'Quiet 3.0 Technology adds more power
states which translates into up to 40% lower idle power
consumption and lower power consumption under moderate loads
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Higher frequencies at the same TDP
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Elimination of the cold bug allows for more
overclocking headroom at extreme low temperatures
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L3 cache is now 2 cycles faster than the
previous generation
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Increased DRAM bandwidth
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Cache flush on halt allows each core's L1 and
L2 flush into shared L3 after a core enters a halt state
allowing the core to drop to a lower speed and save power
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Path based indirect branch prediction
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2x increase in core probe bandwidth
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Larger load/store buffering / larger floating
point buffering / reduced MAB (missed buffer) lifetime
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Improved LOCK pipelineing (an instruction
prefix) improves performance when multiple LOCKS are in process
simultaneously
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FP MOV compute optimization: Floating point
register-to-register move instruction improvements
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