Bjorn3D and CDRInfo reviewed the Phenom X4 9950 BE. This processor is currently the fastest processor that AMD is offering until the 45nm version of the Phenom comes to the market. The Phenom X4 9950 is clocked at 2.6GHz and is manufactured on 65nm Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology. It supports a 2.0 GHz memory controller and HT 3.0. And as its name implies, Black Edition means that the processor will have an unlocked multiplier so it will potentially allows much higher overclocking.

AMD understands that it cannot compete against Intel's high performance and thus they have strategically placed the X4 Phenom 9950 BE at an affordable price. The processor is currently available at price of $184.00, just sandwiched between the Intel's dual-core E8500 running at 3.16GHz and Intel's quad-core Q8200 running at 2.33GHz. So, the processor is very competitive price-wise against Intel.

As our benchmarks show, the X4 9950 BE is able to keep up with the 2.4GHz dual-core processor when the application is single threaded. And it is able to offer a comparable performance against the 2.5 GHz quad core processor from Intel. One area where Intel has the absolute dominance is the multi-media encoding, due to the SSE4 instruction found in all of its 45nm processors. Other than this, the Phenom X4 9950 BE's performance is fairly comparable to the similarly priced Intel processor. Therefore, the pricing of the X4 9950 certainly makes it a good buy if you plan on sticking with an AMD system. Not to mention that this processor has an unlocked multiplier, which means it will allow much higher overlcock. Our attempt to overclock the processor allows us, for the first time, to reach that magical 3GHz mark that was not possible with our previous experience with the Phenom processors (both triple and quad core version). And it is possible to go even higher, assuming that you are willing to spend hours fine-tuning your system and combine the processor with a motherboard featuring the SB750 chipset.

The biggest issue that I can see with the X4 9950 BE is the selection of motherboards. Not all AM2+ boards support the 125W/140W processor, so not everyone currently with an AMD setup is able to upgrade their system to this processor. Luckily, AMD has a 125W version of the processor, but even with lower TDP, there are still some boards out there that only support 95W TDP (as in the XFX 750a that we reviewed).