AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition review: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition

AMD has been targeting mainstream computing for a while now.

9.0

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition

The Good

Great performance. Good value proposition. Unlocked multiplier.

The Bad

Multimedia performance suffers compared to Intel.

The Bottom Line

While the higher power consumption is a slight concern, the X4 955 proves that AMD is back in the performance game and ready to play hard ball. Bring on the next generation.

Its combination of good performance for affordable price has seen it claw back into the graphics market with its most recent generation of cards, and now it looks positioned to do the same with the CPU side of the business. While it doesn't intend to challenge Intel's top performing Core i7 CPUs for now, AMD's latest, the Phenom X4 955 Black Edition (BE), launches a broadside across the bow of Intel's mainstream quad-core processors — in particular the Core 2 Q9550.

Black boxed bliss (Credit: AMD)

Based on AMD's AM3 socket, the 955 is a quad-core, 45nm process CPU running at 3.2GHz, as a result of a 16x multiplier on top of a 200MHz bus. It has 6MB shared L3 cache, along with 64+64KB data + instruction L1 and 512KB L2 cache per core. Being a flagship chip, it's quite a power sucker, at 125W TDP. Being a Black Edition chip, it's also multiplier unlocked — and this combined with the split plane voltage introduced on AM2+ should mean some fairly decent DIY speed increases.

Moving to 938-pin AM3 means a few things; firstly DDR3 support, and secondly the 128-bit integrated memory controller has had its Hypertransport link bumped from 1.8GHz on AM2+ to a healthy 2.0GHz. The processor should be backwards compatible with AM2+ boards, but be warned you'll only be able to use DDR2 on these, and your vendor will need to have released a BIOS update to support the CPU.

Test configuration

We've compared the Phenom II X4 955 BE against its price match competitor from the Intel camp — the Core 2 Q9550. Let's take a closer look at the CPUs on test.

Intel's been outperforming AMD for clock ever since the introduction of the Core architecture, while AMD has hit back on the price platform. AMD's jump to 45nm is finally seeing it claw back some market share, and it's not so much this generation as next generation where we're likely to see some interesting things happen. Let's take a look at the test benches that put the grill on both the Intel and AMD sides.

Note that the Core 2 Q9550 is running with DDR2 compared to the Phenom II X4 955 BE's DDR3 — and although the P7N Diamond is certified for DDR2-1333, it will not run higher, and despite loosening the timings the RAM would not run faster than 1066MHz on this board. As such, we've opted to provide benchmark scores on the Phenom II platform for both the stock 1600MHz DDR3 and downclocked to 1066MHz.

Performance

For the most part, the X4 955 is on top, performance-wise. The Q9550, though, dominates in the iTunes and VirtualDubMod tests, indicating it handles multimedia better, and also makes a significant dent on the WinRAR test. Crysis Warhead proves that after a certain point, you really need a bigger GPU to squeeze out higher scores, the differences between the two CPUs being close to insignificant. While Core i7 is definitely a performance leap on top of these, it also attracts a healthy price premium on both the CPU and the motherboard fronts.

Value

You can pick up an X4 955 on the street now for around AU$350, while recent price drops have brought the Q9550 down to a competitive AU$339. But, of course, it's never just about the CPU, it's total platform cost.

An AM3 board will set you back around AU$150 for an entry-level board, to AU$350 for a performance board. A socket 775 DDR2 board will cost you from AU$120 up to AU$400, while getting one with DDR3 will tally from AU$200 through to AU$350 (all prices excluding the ludicrously expensive top tier boards). Memory-wise, 4GB DDR2-1066 will cost around AU$150, 4GB DDR3-1333 will hit your wallet for about the same.

All up? About six sheets to the wind. In which case it defaults to pure performance, and here the Phenom II X4 955 has it, unless you do masses of multimedia conversion. Its unlocked multiplier should lend it to some juicy overclocking too, potentially overcoming any deficit. While the higher power consumption is a slight concern, the X4 955 proves that AMD is back in the performance game and ready to play hard ball. Bring on the next generation.