AMD announces Athlon II X2 250 and Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition

[Nagoshi]

From Gamespot/E3

On the other side of the world in Taipei, Taiwan, AMD announced the launch of two new processors at Computex: the AMD Athlon II X2 250 and the AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition. Both dual-core processors slide in on the budget end of spectrum and cost $87 and $102, respectively.

The Athlon II X2 250 and the Phenom II X2 550 are clocked at 3.0GHz and 3.1GHz, respectively. Black Edition processors have unlocked multipliers to make overclocking easier for PC enthusiasts. The Athlon II X2 250 will come with 256KB of total L1 cache, and 2MB of total L2 cache. The Phenom II X2 550 will come with 256KB o total L1 cache, 1MB of total L2 cache, and 6MB of L3 cache.

Interesting... I wish they used more cache in both processors.

[untrueparado]

a 6400+ is clocked faster and is cheaper on ebay. probably performs better too.

[psykl0n]

Originally Posted by untrueparado

a 6400+ is clocked faster and is cheaper on ebay. probably performs better too.

90nm vs 45nm

i'd go for the A2 X2.

[CaligulaPwns]

That 550 BE looks enticing...

Originally Posted by untrueparado

a 6400+ is clocked faster and is cheaper on ebay. probably performs better too.

Wow. Just wow.

[Nagoshi]

Originally Posted by untrueparado

a 6400+ is clocked faster and is cheaper on ebay. probably performs better too.

Um... come on. ANY Brisbanes are crushed by the 7750BE Kuma, based on Agena. These new X2 are based on Deneb, which totally crushes Agena.

Can you calculate?

[daytona]

my Pentium 570J would totally crush them all because its 3.8 GHZ!


sorry I had too.

[CaligulaPwns]

Originally Posted by Nagoshi

Can you calculate?

I bet he can but he is obviously getting rounding errors b/c of the inherent BS that comment was based off of.

[Deluded]

Oh, oh, here's one!

My xbox's 180 nm Coppermine-based 700 Mhz processor can be OC'ed to 72427856278356 Ghz, and totally pwns all yo comp, brah!

[Zer010]

Man AMD needs to update the Naming scheme, so many II, 2, two , too

[Nagoshi]

Originally Posted by Zer010

Man AMD needs to update the Naming scheme, so many II, 2, two , too

What's hard?

Athlon = base-end chip
Phenom 1 = old gen high-end chip
Phenom 2 = new gen high-end chip

That's just like Pentium1, 2, 3, 4.

Then X2, X3 and X4 = number of cores on the chip...

[FoMoCo]

Originally Posted by Nagoshi

From Gamespot/E3

Interesting... I wish they used more cache in both processors.

the 550 has all 6MB of L3 in addition to the standard 512k/core L2, thats pretty **** good for a dual core, hell the e8X00s have a meg less and the c2d arch relies on cache way more than k8/10

[Nagoshi]

Originally Posted by FoMoCo

the 550 has all 6MB of L3 in addition to the standard 512k/core L2, thats pretty **** good for a dual core, hell the e8X00s have a meg less and the c2d arch relies on cache way more than k8/10

Yeah, but I wished they used 2MB L2 instead of 1MB for the Phenom. The Athlon doesn't have the L3 cache but has 2MB of L2.

Obviously it's a - for a +, but I'm still sure they could make a better dualcore chip by using both the 2MB L2 cache and the 6MB L3 cache.

I won't complain, since I don't plan on sticking with dualcores for long, and 2MB of L2 / 6MB of L3 is pretty darn impressive (saw a HUGE improvement on my Kuma, due to the different core and 2MB L3 cache, when compared to my Brisbane). Can't wait to see some benchmarks tho... they should make sweet chips for the low budgets

[onewecallgod]

Originally Posted by FoMoCo

the 550 has all 6MB of L3 in addition to the standard 512k/core L2, thats pretty **** good for a dual core

The Phenoms have a unified (shared) L3, so all that was disabled from an X4 were just two cores, the cache was all left alone.

[FoMoCo]

I'm willing to bet the 2MB L2 is a typo and its either 1MB L2 + 1MB L3, or 1MB L2 + 2MB L3 or just 1MB L2 and no L3 which would indeed suck

amd hasn't made 1mb L2 per core chips in a long time, I don't see them starting again with a low end sku

[Nagoshi]

Maybe they somehow found a way to enable the two leftover 512KB cache from the two disabled cores?

Might be a typo... that was an E3 announcement anyway, we should be seeing something else soon. I'm just too lazy to search...

[Jason]

Just got the review posted, going to make a post on the front page news too though.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r..._X2_550_1.html

The Phenom II X2 550 has 512KB L2 per core (1MB total), and 6MB L3 total.
The Athlon II X2 250 has 1MB L2 per core (2MB total), and zero L3.

[Nagoshi]

3.9GHz OC on the Phenom II 550 is great IMHO... with water and more extreme cooling ways things could get interesting...

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by Jason

Just got the review posted, going to make a post on the front page news too though.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r..._X2_550_1.html

The Phenom II X2 550 has 512KB L2 per core (1MB total), and 6MB L3 total.
The Athlon II X2 250 has 1MB L2 per core (2MB total), and zero L3.

For only 87 bucks that thing can FOLD!

[Jason]

Funny you said that. I set up my 940 the other day @ 3.4 GHz. Installed notfred on a USB flash drive and now it folds in the evenings. It can usually finish a couple A2 cores by early morning and I turn it off while I'm working.

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by Jason

Funny you said that. I set up my 940 the other day @ 3.4 GHz. Installed notfred on a USB flash drive and now it folds in the evenings. It can usually finish a couple A2 cores by early morning and I turn it off while I'm working.

So jealous
Hows you SMP or have you not tried it? ( I have been out of the tech industry for too long so I apologize if this is a noob question).