AMD's new CPU: Phenom II

While Intel churns out more of the delicious 45nm Core i7 CPUs, rival AMD looks to catch up - the company is all set to offer its first ever 45nm offering, named Phenom II.

The new core doesn’t have overclocking problem, doesn’t have TLB or any other cache related bug and it looks quite healthy and therefore deserves Phenom II brand.

The new CPU has 4x512KB L2 cache, 6MB of shared L3 cache and it should be available early next year just as we suggested in our earlier reports.

We also found out that AM3 version of the same CPU will be branded as Phenom II but the number after the brand will be different. AM3 Phenom II comes a bit later and the first Phenom II to launch are AM2+ only.

5nm K10.5 can reach 4GHz on air and that if you use liquid cooling you should see even better scores. This is definitely a good sign, and we know that at least the top Deneb will come with an unlocked multiplier and ready to overclock.

The Phenom based on the Agena core was limited with its overclocking capabilities and it looks that this new 45nm Deneb K10.5 has resolved this issue. The CPU won't be available in stores at least until early January, but it's good to know that there is a hope and it will be fun to compare 4GHz Deneb with 4GHz overclocked core i7 aka Nehalem and Core 2 Quad Yorkfield, on an identical clock.

It definitely looks like AMD is coming back with its quad and tri-core 45nm products, followed with Deneb without L3 cache codenamed Propus. The only thing that AMD will miss is a dual-core based on the K10 architecture.