The newest flagship product will be the Phenom II X4 955BE, this processor will run at 3.2 GHz. The Phenom 945 will run at a respectable 3.0 GHz at a full 2.0 GHz HT 3.0 speed at a 0.875 to -1.5V voltage and both of these new processors have an improved 125W TDP (peak wattage), these processors are Socket AM2+ and AM3 compatible.

• Model Number & Core Frequency: X4 955 Black Edition = 3.2GHz
• Model Number & Core Frequency: X4 945 = 3.0GHz

Both processors are virtually the same with the exceptions of a 200 MHz clock frequency differential and the fact that the 955bBE edition is more catered for overclocking as it will have its multiplier and voltages unlocked. Black Edition processors support software-selectable increases to memory controller, HyperTransport, DDR3 and CPU core frequency.

These Phenom II parts as explained are based on AMD's 45nm Silicon on Insulator process technology. Both the Phenom II X4 955BE and 945 feature a total 2MB L2 cache; 512KB per core.

But: a big change is the increase in L3 cache. Phenom II can address 6MB L3 cache shared among cores as a buffer, so is can exchange data in-between the four logical cores.  That's 8 MB of cache and then we have not even accounted for another 512KB total L1 per processor.

• L1 Cache (Instruction + Data): 128KB x4 (64KB + 64KB for each core)
• L2 Cache: 512KB x4 (quad-core)
• L3 Cache: 6MB Shared L3

L3 is where the magic happens though and is probably the reason for Phenom II's success. Well that and the 3.0~3.2 GHz clock frequencies of course. Hey, wanna see what the processor die looks like ?

AMD Phenom II X4 die

Mind you that within the series, some Phenom II processors have slightly smaller caches (the Phenom II X4 800 series processors). But let's rack up the processor line in order to get a better perspective of differences.

So let's recap a little what the advantage of Phenom II are over Phenom I:

• Much higher clock frequencies. 3.0 GHz plus a lot of tweaking headroom (we reached 3.8 GHz stable).
• Significant cache changes - 6 or 8 MB total for L2 + L3.
• DDR2 and DDR3 compatibility on AMD 790 FX/GX chipsets
• Clock Multiplier Control on AMD Phenom II Black Edition Processors. Processors with Clock Multiplier Control unlock system clock multipliers on motherboards supporting this feature. Tune performance with clock multiplier control on motherboards that support customized processor settings.