Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition

Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition is the new top CPU in AMD’s quad-core lineup. And it was included into our today’s comparison together with the junior Intel’s quad-core solutions for a reason. Thanks to relatively low performance of CPUs on K10 microarchitecture and not very high clock frequencies AMD have to sell their best processors at the same price as the junior Intel Core 2 Quad. As a result, we selected Phenom X4 9950 to participate in our “all-Intel” shootout of inexpensive quad-core processors.

The new Phenom X4 continues the family on new B3 stepping known for solving the “TLB-bug”. Phenom X4 9950 has 100MHz higher clock frequency than its predecessor, Phenom X4 9850. They did it by simply increasing the clock frequency multiplier. Other than that, there are no formal differences between these two processors, which you can clearly see from a CPU-Z screenshot.

Just like by the previous model, the North Bridge in Phenom X4 9950 works at 2GHz frequency – maximum AMD can do today. The “Black Edition” tag indicates that this Phenom X4 9950 has an unlocked multiplier that allows easy overclocking. However, “Black Edition” tag is no longer something exclusive these days. AMD has quite a few Black Edition solutions already.

Note that higher clock frequency affected the heat dissipation of Phenom X4 9950 processor. By launching this new processor AMD have evidently squeezed the last drop from their Agena core manufactured with 65nm process, which resulted into horrific typical heat dissipation of 140W. So, Phenom X4 9950 may have limited compatibility with certain mainboards and cooling solutions. However, to be fair we have to say that AMD has also been offering a power-efficient modification of this processor with a typical heat dissipation of 125W.