Confirming
the
rumors we heard last week,
AMD has officially announced the name of its next-generation processors due
out in the second half of this year: Phenom. High-end versions of the chip will
be dubbed Phenom FX, vanilla quad-core flavors will be named Phenom X4.
These processors will be quad-core only and run at the highest clock speeds
in AMD's lineup, much like the current Athlon 64 FX.
At the top of the product lineup we have the Phenom FX processors (codenamed
Agena FX). These processors will be quad-core only and run at the highest clock
speeds in AMD's lineup, much like the current Athlon 64 FX. At the Quad FX
introduction, AMD indicated that FX processors would be Socket-1207 only,
simplifying its product lineup. Unfortunately, AMD has once again reversed its
decision and Phenom FX processors will be available in both Socket-1207 and
Socket-AM2 flavors.
The Phenom X4 and X2 processors are the sensible versions of the Phenom, these
are the ones we will most likely be recommending out of AMD's lineup if history
holds true. The X4 and X2 will be Socket-AM2/AM2+ only and are 100% backwards
compatible with current AM2 motherboards. The current Athlon 64 X2 has
been renamed to the Athlon X2; given that both AMD and Intel offer 64-bit
processors, dropping the 64 from the name makes sense. At the bottom of the list
is AMD's Sempron, which is the only single core brand in the product lineup.
Phenom will work in current Socket-AM2/Socket-1207 motherboards with a BIOS
update, but it loses the ability to run its north bridge and CPU cores at
separate voltages/clock frequencies. If you buy a new Socket-AM2+/Socket-1207+
motherboard, then the CPU cores and north bridge can run at separate
voltages/frequencies. The benefit of doing this is not only power savings, but
AMD has indicated that it can actually run the north bridge faster than the CPU
cores (by 200 - 400MHz) which will improve performance. The L3 cache happens to
run on the same voltage plane and at the same frequency as the north bridge,
compounding the performance benefits of using a new "plus-socket" motherboard
(Socket-AM2+/Socket-1207+). AMD has officially confirmed that Phenom will
support up to DDR2-1066, reasserting AMD's commitment to the memory technology
it switched to a year ago.
)