On Tuesday, AMD announced a new version of its flagship “Black” Phenom X4, as well as two energy-efficient versions of the Phenom X4 chip. However, the AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition does not command a flagship price: AMD is charging a suggested retail price of just $235 for the 2.6-GHz chip. AMD also released the AMD Phenom X4 9350e, a 2.0-GHz processor for $195; and the AMD Phenom X4 9150e, a 1.8-GHz version for $175. All three chips are manufactured on AMD’s 65-nm process, contain 2 Mbytes of a shard level 3 cache and include 512 Kbytes of level-2 cache per core.
AMD’s new Black processor consumes 140 watts at maximum, an increase over the 9850, which consumes 125 watts. However, the chip also ships with AMD’s OverDrive software with clock multiplier control, allowing users to scale down the performance to save power, or dial it up for more performance. At Computex, Asus released a list of boards that could accept the new 140-watt Black chips. The energy-efficient Phenom X4s, on the other hand, consume no more than 65 watts in total. All of AMD’s current chips are built with 65-nanometer transistors. Processors with 45-nanometer technology are expected this year. Starting late last year, Intel moved its product line to 45 nanometers, which means more transistors on a chip to deliver better power-to-performance ratios.
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