AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE review - Introduction

AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE processor tested

AMD releases Athlon X2 7000 Series processor (Dual-core Phenom) - The Kuma has arrived.

Over the past year or two the buzz-word has been quad-core processors. The one thing though that we keep forgetting is that the most value is to be found in dual-core processors. The reality is that with normal everyday usage and gaming, a dual-core processor is really all you need.

In the years to come multi-core gaming will get bigger and bigger, yet remains a slow process. The momentum for multi-core processors, especially four cores, is slowly becoming standard. But what if you take a Phenom X4 processor, chop it in half and start working with such a processor?

The product we are reviewing today is exactly that. AMD developed a new dual-core processor based on the TLB bug-free (B3) revision, under the codename KUMA. And quite frankly... it's a really interesting product, as for less than 79 USD/EUR you get to have quite a nice performing product with fairly nice clock frequencies. Yes... 79 USD.

It's interesting, earlier last month 65nm dual-core Phenom listings surfaced on a price search engine in Europe, and unofficial benchmarks of a 2.2GHz model also surfaced.

Then we stumbled into an October roadmap which revealed two new dual-core Phenom derivatives. Branded Athlon X2 7550 and Athlon X2 7750, the two CPUs have respective clock speeds of 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz, which they each pair with 3MB of total cache; 512KB of the L2 variety per core and 2MB of shared L3 cache per chip.

That was the first life sign of Kuma. Now I am surprised, and why... you would ask. I'm surprised because AMD did not label this product Phenom X2, they have chosen to use the older Athlon X2 branding for the product.

Ah well, it's all in a name I guess. AMD today is releasing three KUMA based products:

• AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE 2.7 GHz (Black Edition)
• AMD Athlon X2 7750 2.7 GHz
• AMD Athlon X2 7550 2.5 GHz

AMD is manufacturing these CPUs on their 65nm process technology, and both models will have 95W thermal envelopes.

Today we will have a closer look at the Athlon X2 7750 BE and see if dual-core is still an interesting option for this audience.