Phenom II X4 965 BE revision C3 review - AMD Phenom II architecture

AMD Phenom II architecture

Earlier this year AMD made a move to a 45nm node to manufacture the newer model Phenom II processors. What does that mean? Well, explaining Phenom II can be best done by looking at what the first generation Phenom really was.

First up was the transition from 65nm towards 45nm, if you look at this from a distance it pretty much means that they were able to make this processor smaller compared to the last generation Phenom (I) products. And that has advantages, often to be found in lower voltages and higher clock frequencies.

The flagship product right now is the Phenom II X4 965BE with BE short for Black Edition, this processor will run at 3.4 GHz at a full 2.0 GHz HT 3.0 speed. Its voltage range is 0.875 to 1.5V.

This new revision C3 processor has a slightly decreased maximum peak wattage of 125 Watts (TDP), shaving off 15 Watts from its predecessor.

Being an AM3 package, the processor is both motherboard Socket AM2+ and AM3 compatible.

• Model Number & Core Frequency: X4 965 Black Edition = 3.4 GHz

As this is a BE edition this processor caters much more 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.

This Phenom II part is based on AMD's 45nm Silicon On Insulator process technology and has a total of 2MB L2 cache; 512KB per core. However -- a big change in Phenom II architecture was a large increase in L3 cache. Phenom II can address 6MB L3 cache shared among the cores as a buffer, so it 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 a lot of magic happens and is probably the reason for Phenom II's success. Well, that and the flexible and high clock frequencies of course.

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 advantages of Phenom II are over Phenom I:

• Much higher clock frequencies. 3.0~3.4 GHz plus a lot of tweaking headroom (we reached 4.0 GHz stable).
• Significant cache changes - 6 or 8 MB total for L2 + L3.
• DDR2 and DDR3 compatibility on AMD 785/790 FX/GX chipsets
• Clock Multiplier Control on AMD Phenom II Black Edition Processors. Processors with Clock Multiplier Control unlock system on motherboards supporting this feature. Tune performance with clock multiplier control on motherboards that support customized processor settings.