AMD has been trailing Intel in the performance wars that
rage between the two chipmakers for the most powerful processors. AMDs latest
entry into the battle is its Phenom processors.
ChileHardware has scored
some specs for the AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition and posted
them. The Phenom 9600 Black Edition is a quad-core Agena processor with an 89W TDP. The processor is built on AMDs
65nm process just like the other Phenom processors. The operating voltage is
0.97va to 1.15v.
The HyperTransport bus runs at 1800MHz and the operating
frequency is 2.3GHz. The processor covered here is B2 stepping and features
several extensions including MMX, 3DNow Extended!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a,
AMD64, Cool’n’Quiet, and NX-bit AMD-V. The best feature of the processor for
computer users who overclock is that the Phenom 9600 Black Edition is multiplier
unlocked.
The price is pegged at 220 Euros, which equates to about
$315 USD. Like all the other Phenom processors, the Black Edition 9600 does suffer from the well-publicized TLB
processor bug DailyTech reported
on early in December 2007.
This isn’t the first Black Edition processor from AMD,
though it is the first Black Edition Phenom part. AMD introduced a Black Edition Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in September of 2007.
According to the AMD Phenom roadmap that DailyTech
broke in December of 2007, Phenom processors are expected to show up in
2008 running at 2.4GHz, 2.6GHz and beyond.