Amd Phenom Tm Ii X2 550 Processor 3.10 Ghz Price

AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition CPU

Manufacturer: AMD
UK Price (as reviewed): £71.86 (inc. VAT)
U.s. Price (as reviewed): $102.99 (ex. Tax)

It's probably unnecessary to remind you that AMD has had very few successful "firsts" when it comes to its Phenom line. The latest Phenom Ii X2 550 Blackness Edition is, thankfully (or should that be "finally"?), the exception to the rule. Information technology'due south the showtime dual-cadre Phenom Ii chip - and its actually pretty damn good!

As it's a Phenom 2, it'due south a dual-core of 45nm origins, and is very like to its bigger triple-core (X3) and quad-cadre (X4) brothers, only with two cores disabled. This means that with special motherboards, there'south the possibility of unlocking the extra cores, although there's no guarantee that they'll work.

The 45nm K10.5 design used by the X2 550 Exist features a huge 8MB of common L3 cache - more than enough to act as a snoop filter for but ii cores - too as DDR3 and DDR2 support. Supported memory speeds are faster than the Athlon Two: 1,066MHz for DDR2 and 1,333-1,600MHz for DDR3. Another advantage is that this is a Blackness Edition production - so the multiplier is unlocked for piece of cake overclocking.

Information technology comes clocked at 3.1GHz, and with effectively a DDR3 retentiveness channel per core (in un-ganged mode), at that place's not only oodles of cache, but also tons of fast memory access too.

Clock Frequency: iii.1GHz, 200MHz 10 15.v
Core Count: Two physical
L1 Cache: 64KB data and 64KB instruction per cadre (256KB in total)
L2 Cache: 512KB exclusive data cache per core (1MB in total)
L3 Cache: 8MB L3 inclusive cache
Fabrication Procedure: 45nm DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) engineering
Packaging: Socket AM3 (Socket 938)
Memory back up: DDR2/DDR3
Thermal Design Power (TDP): 85W
Transistors: ~758 1000000
Die Size: 258mm²

Click to enlarge

All this will set you back just over £seventy; in terms of its Intel competition, this situates it betwixt the Core 2 Duo E6300 at £64, and the pricier E7400 at £85. It's not just CPU price that you need to look at when making a buying decision though: the price of the whole platform (i.due east. motherboard, CPU and retentivity) is crucial. In this respect, the X2 550 Exist does rather well. Pair it with an MSI 770-CD45 motherboard and 4GB of low latency DDR3-1333 and it costs just £189. However, for an Intel Cadre 2 Duo E7400, Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R and 4GB of DDR2-1066 (it'south £2 more than 800MHz), you'll need to shell out £224 - £35 difference.

Even if you cull the E6300 instead, the total system is still £fifteen more than expensive. It doesn't sound like much, simply it'south halfway to a adept CPU libation such as the Titan Fenrir. The AMD setup should have more than legs as well - AM3 is in its infancy, with an upgrade to triple- or quad-core bachelor, whereas LGA775 is at the end of its life. That said, cheap Q6600s could be flooding the market soon as upgrade cycles come around. All this is worth keeping in heed every bit nosotros accept a look at how well the X2 550 Be performs.