AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE AM3
Today at Computex, AMD took the wraps off of two highly anticipated processors: the Athlon II X2 250 and the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition. Both are based on AMD's 45nm SOI process with the key difference being the amount of L3 cache. The Phenom II X2 550, codenamed Callisto, gets the full 6 MB cache of the Phenom II family and will serve as AMD's new flagship dual-core processor. The Athlon II X2 250, on the other hand, is based on the new native dual-core Regor die that omits the L3 cache completely and targets the mainstream segment. Benchmark Reviews was fortunate to receive samples of both processors and today we can officially share with you our results. In this review, we focus on the Phenom II X2 550 BE HDZ550WGIBOX.
Based on the same 45nm STARS micro-architecture as the rest of the Phenom II family, the X2 550 BE should not only be faster, but also more efficient than AMD's previous 65nm Kuma dual cores. The Athlon X2 7850 that we reviewed back in April, for example, posts a decent 2.8 GHz clock speed and 2 MB L3 cache, but at the cost of a 95W TDP. The new Callisto-based X2 550 BE, however, comes in 300 MHz higher at 3.1 GHz with a 6 MB L3 cache and a TDP of only 80W.
Of course, performance and efficiency do come at a price. In this case, a Phenom II X2 550 BE will set you back $102. That positions it toward the upper-mainstream market, just below the Phenom II X3 family. On the Intel side, its nearest competitors will be the Pentium E5400 and Core 2 Duo E7400. Fortunately, we have an E7400 on hand for comparison. Read on to discover how the X2 550 stacks up against this and several other processors.
About Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD)
"Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home, and play.
Over the course of AMD's three decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.
However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities."
We believe our company history bears that out."
Phenom II X2 AM3 Black Edition Features
Ready to accelerate
Take performance over the top with AMD PhenomTM II processors and AMD OverDriveTM software. Second generation AMD PhenomTM II processors feature a refined architecture, the award-winning innovation of AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, and 45nm technology for maximum performance headroom.
Beyond specifications
Tune performance with the superior headroom of AMD PhenomTM II processors and AMD OverDriveTM software. Combined with ATI RadeonTM HD graphics cards, they deliver extreme visual performance and the ability to control and monitor system functions.
Total system performance
Build a total system tuned for performance, beginning with an all-AMD solution including AMD PhenomTM II processors, AMD chipsets, and ATI RadeonTM HD graphics with CrossFireXTM technology for multi-GPU support. Experience the power of gaming beyond high definition.
HDZ550WGIBOX Specifications
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Model Number & Core Frequency: X2 550 Black Edition = 3.1GHz
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TRAY OPN# HDZ550WFK2DGI
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PIB OPN# HDZ550WGIBOX
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L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (256KB total L1 per processor) 
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L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (1MB total L2 per processor)
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L3 Cache Size: 6MB (shared)
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Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller *
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Black Edition processors support software selectable increases to memory controller, HyperTransport, DDR3 and CPU core frequency.
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Memory Controller Speed: 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
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Types of Memory Supported: Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz)
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HyperTransport 3.0 Specification: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)
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Total Processor-to-System Bandwidth: Up to 37.3GB/s bandwidth [Up to 21.3 GB/s total bandwidth (DDR3-1333) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)]
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Up to 33.1GB/s bandwidth [Up to 17.1 GB/s total bandwidth (DDR2-1066) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)]
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Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
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Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 1 Module 1
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Process Technology: 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
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Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2
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Approximate Transistor count: ~ 758 million
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Max Temp: 70o Celsius
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Core Voltage: 0.850-1.425V
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Max TDP: 80 Watts
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MSRP: $102
*Note: configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes
Closer Look: Phenom II X2 550 BE
Although based on Deneb, AMD is referring to the new Phenom II X2 series as Callisto. Much like the AMD Athlon X2 7850, the X2 550 Black Edition is essentially a quad core chip with two of the four cores disabled. The performance and efficiency improvement over the 7850 comes from the use of AMD's 45nm SOI process. As a K10.5 chip, it benefits from several architectural changes as well, including more level 3 cache and an improved memory controller with DDR3 support.
A direct benefit of these architectural and manufacturing improvements are higher clock frequencies. The Phenom II X2 550 will hit the shelves at 3.1 GHz core speed and 2.0 GHz for the CPU-NB. Of course, as a Black Edition part, these frequencies can be easily increased by adjusting the multiplier via the BIOS or AMD's OverDrive 3.0 utility. Be sure to check out the Overclocking section later in the review for our take on this software.
The 45nm manufacturing process also provides more room for cache. Sources at AMD confirm that the Phenom II X2 550 will retain the full 6MB L3 Cache of the original Deneb die as shown in the CPU-Z screenshot above. The transistor count and die size remain the same as well, at 758 million transistors and a 258 mm2. With two cores disabled, however, AMD managed to reduce the TDP to just 80W.
Testing and Results
Before I begin any benchmarking or overclocking, I thoroughly stress the CPU and memory by running Prime95 on all available cores for 12 hours. If no errors are found, I move on to a gaming stress test. To do this, I use Prime95 again to stress the processor, while running an instance of FurMark's stability test on top of this. If the computer survives this test for 2 hours without lockup or corruption, I consider it to be stable and ready for overclocking. After achieving what I feel is stable overclock, I run to these tests again for certainty. The goal of this stress testing is to ensure the clock speeds and settings are stable before performing any benchmarks. After all, what good are performance measures if the system cannot reliably produce them.
Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict and Supreme Commander benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.
For our Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition review, the following test systems and comparison processors will be used. While we certainly don't expect the X2 550 to match the performance of all of these processors, including a variety of mainstream and enthusiast hardware allows us to analyze important price per performance considerations. For this particular review, we'll focus on the AMD X2 250 and Intel E7400 as the closest competitors.
Intel LGA775 Test System
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Processors: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400, Core 2 Quad Q9450
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System Memory: 2x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 (1333MHz@6-6-6-20 & 1066MHz@6-6-6-15)
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Disk Drive: Western Digital 6400AAKS 640GB
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Optical Drive: LITE-ON iHAS122-04 DVD Burner
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PSU: Corsair TX850W
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Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3
AMD Socket AM3 Test System
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Motherboard: Asus M4A79T Deluxe
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System Memory: 2x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 (1600MHz@7-7-7-24)
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Disk Drive: Western Digital 6400AAKS 640GB
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Optical Drive: LITE-ON iHAS122-04 DVD Burner
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PSU: Corsair TX850W
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Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3
AMD Socket AM2/AM2+ Test System
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Motherboard: Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P
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System Memory: 2x2GB G.SKILL DDR2 (800MHz@4-4-4-12 or 1066MHz@5-5-5-15)
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Disk Drive: Western Digital 6400AAKS 640GB
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Optical Drive: LITE-ON iHAS122-04 DVD Burner
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PSU: Corsair TX850W
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Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3
Benchmark Applications
EVEREST Benchmark Tests
EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.
Borrowing its memory controller from the Phenom II X4 and X3 families, it's no surprise that the Phenom II X2 550 performs just about on par with our X4 955 in the memory benchmarks. As with the other Phenom II's, however, it's week point it in memory write bandwidth. Still, it manages to pull ahead of the Intel E7400 in every test.
That memory performance helps the X2 550 best the E7400 in the PhotoWorxx benchmark as well. According the Lavalys, this benchmark stresses both the processor and the memory subsystem. The other two tests, though, place more emphasis on the processor itself and allow the E7400 to catch up. Here, the X2 550 and E7400 are essentially matched, each one taking a turn at the lead.
Moving on to floating point benchmarks, the Intel chips appear to have an advantage in the single precision Julia test. However, the double precision (Mandel) and extended precision (Sin Julia) tests seem to level the playing field a bit. In these two tests, the Phenom II X2 550, Intel E7400, and Athlon II X2 250 are all within about 5% of each other. For most users, though, floating point performance isn't nearly as important as the integer performance tested above.
Passmark PerformanceTest
PassMark PerformanceTest is a PC hardware benchmark utility that allows a user to quickly assess the performance of their computer and compare it to a number of standard 'baseline' computer systems. The Passmark PerformanceTest CPU tests all benchmark the mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE, and 3DNow! instructions of modern processors.
In our tests there were several areas of concentration for each benchmark, which are combined into one compound score. This score is referred to as the CPU Mark, and is a composite of the following tests: Integer Math, Floating Point Math, Find Prime Numbers, SSE/3DNow!, Compression, Encryption, Image Rotation, and String Sorting. For this review, we've also decided to run the memory benchmark, which results in a composite score based on the following tests: small block allocation, cached read, uncached read, write performance, and large block allocation.
In Passmark, the Intel processors again appear to have a slight advantage, with the Intel E7400 pulling ahead of the Phenom II X2 550. Reflecting on trends we saw with Everest, my guess is the Passmark CPU score has a large floating point component to it. Also interesting is the higher memory score, which directly contradicts the higher memory bandwidth of the X2 550 reported by Everest. It's obvious we'll need a few more benchmarks before we can reach a consensus.
PCMark05 Benchmark Tests
Using synthetic benchmarks to compare one product to another has some distinct advantages when testing similar hardware, yet I have never found myself completely satisfied by the process. I have come to understand that they're important for comparing "apples to apples", and that the results are usually very consistent. But as with any synthetic benchmark, the numbers can often mean very little more than just numbers. We don't take a high score on a synthetic benchmark to mean that a product will/should perform well, and neither should you. The difference between projected performance and actual performance is the difference between fire and the fire-fly.
PCMark is a series of computer benchmark tools developed by Futuremark. The tools are designed to test the performance of the user's CPU, read/write speeds of RAM and hard drives. We have used these tests to simulate a battery of applications and tasks, which will produce results we can compare to other systems using similar hardware.
Contrary to Passmark, PCMark05 places the Phenom II X2 550 ahead of the Intel E7400 by about 5% on the CPU test and 9% on the memory test. Taking a look at the individual tests, however, reveals a slight lead in Intel's favor on the single-threaded audio compression sub-test. Historically, this is one area in which Intel's Core 2 series does very well. In most other sub-tests, though, the X2 550 came out on top, leading to the higher composite score.
Given the results so far, I'm tempted to declare a tie between the X2 550 and the E7400. Each seem to have their strengths and weaknesses within our synthetic benchmark suites. Of course, we still have a few tests to go. Let's see how they do in some real world gaming benchmarks.
Crysis Gaming
Crysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX9, both on Vista and Windows XP.
Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading.
Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged.
When testing a CPU, the settings we choose are a bit different than a typical video card review. As you'll see in the charts below, modern games can easily max out the processing abilities of the video card and mask any differences between the CPUs. For this reason, we generally start at low resolutions and quality settings and slowly ramp them up until we hit the limit of the video card. This allows us to quickly distinguish differences between CPUs and identify any other limiting hardware.
Crysis has been a notoriously demanding game and, with the right settings, still is. Results of the Crysis Benchmark Tool show the Intel E7400 with a few frames per second lead over the Phenom II X2 550. At our maximum test setting, however, the results even out as we approach the limit of the HD 4870 in our test system.
Devil May Cry 4 Gaming
Devil May Cry 4 is one of the newest additions to Benchmark Reviews' testing suite. Fortunately for us, Capcom recognized the community's interest in hardware testing and included a built in benchmarking tool with this game. In fact, it is even included it in the demo. The benchmarking tool runs through four different scene, all of which I highly recommend watching. However, for the purposes of our review, we only report the scores of the most challenging tests: scenes 2 and 4.
Similar to the Crysis gaming benchmarks, we will start testing DMC 4 at lower settings to reduce the impact of GPU limitations. From there, we'll slowly increase resolution and quality settings until we reach the limit of our HD 4870.
Up first is Scene 2 of the DMC4 built-in benchmark. At low settings, the Phenom II X2 550 has a clear lead over the Intel E7400 of about 7%. At higher resolutions and quality settings, however, the numbers look a bit different with the E7400 ahead by 1-2%. Looking at the range of scores across the board, though, this appears to be within the margin of error for this test.
In the fourth scene, the Phenom II X2 550 again dominates the lower resolution test among the dual core processors listed. Interestingly, in our second test run at 1280x1024, the Phenom II X2 550 even pulls ahead of the quad-cores. My guess is we're hitting the limit of our HD 4870 again and that is causing the mixed results; increasing the resolution and quality a step further tightens things up a bit.
SPECperfview CATIA Tests
SPECviewperf is a portable OpenGL performance benchmark program written in C. It was developed by IBM. Later updates and significant contributions were made by SGI, Digital (Compaq, HP), 3Dlabs (Creative Labs) and other SPECopc project group members. SPECviewperf provides a vast amount of flexibility in benchmarking OpenGL performance. Currently, the program runs on most implementations of UNIX, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Linux.
SPECviewperf parses command lines and data files, sets the rendering state, and converts data sets to a format that can be traversed using OpenGL rendering calls. It renders the data set for a pre-specified amount of time or number of frames with animation between frames. Finally, it outputs the results. SPECviewperf reports performance in frames per second. Other information about the system under test - all the rendering states, the time to build display lists (if applicable), and the data set used - are also output in a standardized report.
A "benchmark" using SPECviewperf is really a single invocation of SPECviewperf with command-line options telling the SPECviewperf program which data set to read in, which texture file to use, what OpenGL primitive to use to render the data set, which attributes to apply and how frequently, whether or not to use display lists, and so on. One quickly realizes that there are an infinite number of SPECviewperf "benchmarks" (an infinite number of data sets multiplied by an almost infinite number of command-line states).
Although not considered a gaming benchmark, the SPECviewperf Catia test does measure Open GL rendering performance. It also happens to be single threaded, which puts the dual cores and quad cores on a level playing field. Here, the Intel E7400 has a slight lead over the AMD Phenom II X2 550, as well as the other processors in our line up. The X2 550 comes in at a respectable fourth place.
Phenom II X2 550 BE Overclocking
No AMD Black Edition review would be complete without at least some mention of overclocking. While I didn't have time to completely explore the limits of our Phenom II X2 550 review sample, I was able to elicit a decent overclock without much effort. For the most part, it behaved similarly to its quad core sibling we previously reviewed: the Phenom II X4 955.
In the AMD OverDrive screenshot above, you can see the final multipliers and clock speeds we settled on. For the two cores, we found 3.8 GHz the highest we could go on air cooling without introducing instability. That's an 18.4% increase over stock. For the CPU-NB, which affects the memory controller and L3 cache, we went with 2.6 GHz. That's a 23% increase over stock and should help out considerably in memory intensive applications. The charts below provide a snapshot of the performance gains you can expect.
As expected, increasing the CPU-NB by 600 MHz has a big impact on memory performance. The biggest gain can be seen in write bandwidth, which, at 22.9%, seems to increase proportionately with the frequency. Read and copy performance also increased significantly, as well as PCMark05's composite memory score.
Looking at CPU performance, we see a similar trend. The 18.4% increase in core clock speed yields considerable gains in all of the benchmarks. It's clear the overclocked L3 cache and memory controller are contributing as well, particularly in the Everest AES benchmark.
Gains in our gaming tests aren't quite as high as in the synthetic benchmarks. The most dramatic increase can be seen in the Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark at low settings. From that point on, however, the game is essentially limited by our HD 4870 and overclocking the processor has a negligible effect. Crysis shows a similar trend, with the effect of the overclocked processor slowly diminishing as resolution and quality settings are increased.
AMD Phenom II Final Thoughts
The AMD Phenom II X2 family of processors is a good step forward for AMD. The improved 45nm manufacturing process that helped the Phenom brand make a comeback has finally trickled down to a decent mainstream price point. The Phenom II X2 550 that we tested today will sell for $102, but as the series expands, less expensive Phenom II X2's should be right around the corner.
In terms of competition, the Phenom II X2's will be positioned directly against the Pentium and Core 2 Duo processors from Intel. Our testing today confirmed that the Phenom II X2 550 is about on par with the Intel C2D E7400. On the AMD side, the Phenom II X2's are also likely to pull some market share away from the X3's. While the X3's have the obvious advantage of an extra core, the X2's offer higher clock speeds for a lower price. For single-threaded, frequency dependent applications, these X2's may prove to be the better bargain.
HDZ550WGIBOX Conclusion
It's been a while since AMD had a true dual core competitor to Intel's Core 2 Duo family, but I think it's safe to say that day has come. Throughout our tests, the AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE was able to keep up and even outpace our Intel E7400. Memory intensive benchmarks and applications, in particular, seem to favor the X2 550.
The X2 550 earns high marks in construction quality as well. At stock settings it performed without a hitch and took to our 1600MHz low-latency DDR3 instantly. Keep in mind, however, that as a new processor some BIOS updates may be necessary. Be sure to check with your motherboard manufacturer if you encounter any instability.
The good news is that this AM3 chip is backwards compatible with most AM2+ motherboards. Thanks to a 45nm process, the X2 550 is also more efficient than its predecessors, despite a considerable increase in clock speed and L3 cache. At 80W, the TDP is a bit higher than the comparable Intel E7400 (65W), but still a significant improvement over the previous 95W Kumas.
That lower TDP also means more headroom when it comes to overclocking. Thanks to the unlocked multiplier, the Phenom II X2 550 is much easier to overclock than an of Intel's dual core offerings. In just a few minutes we were able to get our X2 550 up to 3.8 GHz core speed and 2.6 GHz CPU-NB speed using basic air cooling.
When it comes to value, the Phenom II X2 550 BE is a solid winner. At only $99.99, it offers performance comparable to the more expensive Intel E7400 and can easily be overclocked to offer more.
Pros:
+ Excellent price/performance ratio
+ AM3/AM2 compatibility
+ DDR3 support
+ 6MB L3 cache
+ Efficient 45nm process.
Cons:
- 80W TDP still higher than comparable Intel processors
Ratings:
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Performance: 9.0
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Construction: 9.5
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Functionality: 9.25
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Overclock: 9.5
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Value: 9.5
Final Score: 9.4 out of 10.
Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.
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