Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition
$275
AMD
www.amd.com
CPUs: 3

Specs: Socket AM2+ 940; Clock speed: 3GHz; HyperTransport 3.0 Link: 3.6GHz full duplex; 45nm process; Cache: 2MB total dedicated L2 cache, 6MB L3 cache; 125W max TDP

Phenom II X4 940 BE
Test system specs: Processor: 3GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition; RAM: 2GB Qimonda DDR3-1067 CL7; Graphics: ATI Radeon 4850; Hard drive: 150GB Western Digital Raptor 1500

Core i7-965
Test system specs: Processor: 3.2GHz Intel Core i7-65 Extreme Edition; RAM: 3GB Qimonda DDR3-1067 CL7; Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 280; Hard drive: 150GB Western Digital Raptor 1500

The rise of the Dragon is upon us. With the release of the Phenom II processors, the third component of AMD’s new Dragon platform is in place. The Phenom II joins the 4800 HD series graphics and 7-Series chipsets to complete the platform.

I hoped that the best Phenom II would perform better than the meek original Phenom I, and indeed it did. Across the board, the new CPU outperforms its little brother by a long shot. AMD apparently figured something out between the original Phenom release and now. (It’s no surprise that the Phenom II was released so shortly after the Phenom.) It’s a better CPU, and it fits nicely with the Dragon platform.

What’s interesting is that nothing has fundamentally changed (other than the 45nm process) from the Phenom I. That said, the Phenom II’s performance still lags behind the the top chips from a certain bluish competitor; but AMD knows that and has priced the Dragon components accordingly. This is AMD’s top-of-the-line HD gaming and productivity CPU, but as with many AMD processors of late, this one comes with a caveat: “at an affordable price.” (Reading between the lines, one might consider that a euphemism for “This is a budget CPU.”)

Nevertheless, there are plenty of good things to say about the Phenom II. The system ran surprisingly quietly even when heavily overclocked—a nice bonus for those who will use this CPU in double-duty gaming/home-theater applications and want to keep their machine quiet.

Further, the Phenom II X4 940 has a decent amount of headroom for overclocking: I was able to hit just a hair below 3.7GHz and scored P7556 in 3DMark Vantage. And just about every conceivable BIOS feature is unlocked, giving the overclocker a smorgasbord of ways to push the system to its performance limit.

Finally, the socket AM2+ Phenom II processors will be forward-compatible with the upcoming AM3 socket and will support both DDR2 and DDR3. This effectively lets users upgrade their systems piecemeal, which is always a nice treat.

For $275, the Phenom II X4 Black Edition is a pretty good deal for a pretty good processor. If you want to build a solid gaming system, the Phenom II is a fine place to start. And when you consider the cost of the Phenom II in the context of a whole Dragon-based system, the whole shebang is quite a value.

by Seth Colaner

View the chart that accompanies this article.
(NOTE: These pages are PDF (Portable Document Format) files. You will need Adobe Acrobat to view these pages. Download Adobe Acrobat Reader)