AMD 65W Quad and Dual Core Processors: Phenom II X4 910e and Athlon II X2 255

INTRODUCTION

AMD has made a good come back with the Phenom II processor. Despite the fact that the processor is still not able to compete against Intel Core i7 processors, AMD hangs there and gives a good fight against the Core 2 processors. To stay competitive, AMD has launched the first sub $100 quad core processor and released many low power variant quad core processors.

Today, AMD released a few updates to their current line-up. Today’s launch includes the Phenom II X2 555,the fastest dual-core desktop processor running at 3.2GHz with 80W TDP at $99. It will have unlocked multiplier for the overclocking enthusiasts. Three Athlon chips are also released, a quad core X4 635 clocked at 2.9GHz, a triple-core X3 440 at 3.0GHz, and a dual core X2 255 at 3.1GHz. The processors are selling at $119, $84, and $74 respectively. Among the three Athlon processors, the X2 255 has a maximum TDP of 65W while the other two processors have max TDP of 95W.

In addition to the 65W Athlon II X2 255, AMD also releases launched the Phenom II X4 910e that is also with 65W max TDP. This processor is a low power quad core processor running at 2.6GHz clock speed and will be selling at $169. AMD has been releasing low power high performance processors ever since the first Phenom processor. Contrasting the 65W maximum TDP to the 125 watts power that is found on the Phenom II X4 965 BE, a whopping 60 watts less power is consumed.

All of the processors released today are built with 45 nm SOI with Immersion Lithography process by the Global Foundry.  They support 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, AMD64, Cool and Quiet, NX bit, and AMD-V. We are not going to repeat all of the details on the Phenom II/Athlon II processors as we had previously released an article discussion these features in detail. One thing we do want to mention is that while the Phenom II X2 555 is manufactured with C3 stepping, all other processors are manufactured with C2 stepping.

AMD also told us that all of these processors will work with their upcoming 800 series motherboards. They are of course compatible with current AMD3 based boards but as always, make sure you have the latest BIOS before install the processor into your board. We tested both AMD CPU's Athlon Phenom II 910, and the Athlon II X2 255 with an older BIOS on a Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard and we had no issues on getting the computer to boot up.