In order to start off CES with a band, AMD decided to unveil their new Phenom II architecture. The Phenom II signals AMD’s entrance into the 45-nanometer manufacturing process. Based on their “shanghai” architecture, this new chip will offer up a 20% speed boost over their older 2.6GHz personal best. Optimized design, as well 4MB of total extra cache, and support for up to DDR3 1,333MHz RAM. One other added bonus is higher stock clock speeds will be tolerated, up to 3GHz.
In order to keep their gaming focus alive, AMD is including a very nice over-clocking utility that will in its highest form. The chip is capable of speeds of up to 4GHz on fan cooling alone! An impressive feat to say the least. Using more extreme cooling such as with Nitrogen will yield numbers up to 6GHz or higher…whew! According to AMD, Intel’s chips, including the i7 cannot reach that high because they are limited to a “cold bug” that does not allow them to drop below a certain temperature.
When AMD was poked and prodded of lower stock speeds than Intel, AMD responded saying that they wanted to allow more headroom for the chip to stretch it’s legs safely as well as avoiding another speed race with Intel.
Besides brute speed, Phenom II brings power savings as well to the new chip. Reports are saying energy savings of up to 30-40% at peak load, and that is even including the 125W ceiling. The chip is designed to buddy up with the 790GX mainboard chipset and be called the “Dragon”. The marriage of the two components allows a 3.6GHz or faster HyperTransport Bus, as well as better integrated graphics that can be used in Hybrid Crossfire mode which will shut down dedicated graphics cards as needed to reduce power consumption.
Backwards compatibility is insured to many existing 780-series chipsets using DDR2 RAM, all you have to do is download a firmware update and all will blend nicely.
The Phenom II chips are now available. The 2.8GHz Phenom X4 920 costs $235 in large PC maker sized batches. The cream of the crop 3.0GHz 940 model will come unclocked for overclocking and will come it at a fairly reasonable price of $275.
Source: Electronista
