With the introduction of the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition, AMD matches its world record for longest CPU name. Even better, this is the fastest desktop CPU the company has ever produced, and it goes toe to toe with one of Intel's best Core 2 Quad processors.


- http://techreport.com/articles.x/16796
- http://hothardware.com/articles/AMD-...Black-Edition/
- http://www.ocaholic.ch/xoops/html/mo...l_lang=english
- http://icrontic.com/articles/amd-phenom-ii-x4-955
- http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenom2_955/
- http://www.techspot.com/review/162-amd-phenom2-x4-955/
- http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Ha...eviews/pii955/
- http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...13&Item id=63
- http://www.amdzone.com/index.php/rev...enom-ii-x4-955
- http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1560&pageID=6819
- http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3551
- http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r..._X4_955_1.html
- http://www.i4u.com/section-viewarticle-532.html
- http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=761

That, I think, leads us to our conclusions, which ought to be fairly straightforward. The performance contest between the Phenom II X4 955 and the Core 2 Quad 9550 is crazy close, and even the X4 955's one apparent weakness, a higher power/thermal rating, turned out to be a non-issue in our testing.

AMD knew what it had in this CPU: practically a mirror image of the Core 2 Quad Q9550. They've done two smart things, as a result. They've priced the chip right and have given it an unlocked multiplier to simplify overclocking. Add to those things the fact that Socket AM3 seems to have a better upgrade path than LGA775, and the Phenom II X4 955 looks to be the smarter choice for most consumers, should they be choosing between these two products.

Strictly on value, one might wish to step down to one of our favorite Phenom II processors, the X3 720. Gamers, especially, don't need four cores. If you do value multithreaded performance, the Core i7-920 could be an interesting possibility. But somewhere in between, the Phenom II X4 955 could make a whole lot of sense.