The Phenom II X2 550 BE

The Phenom II X2 550 BE

We actually get two new dual-core chips today, the second is the new Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition. Like all of the other chips in the Phenom II lineup, the X2 550 is simply a die-harvested Phenom II X4 part. In other words, what we have is a quad-core Phenom II with two of its cores disabled. Given that it’s still fairly early in GlobalFoundries’ 45nm manufacturing process, it makes sense to see so many harvested parts. I would expect these Phenom II X2 and perhaps even the X3 derivatives to either disappear or shift out of the limelight as AMD’s yields improve.

Because it’s based on the quad-core Phenom II processor, the X2 550 BE has a full 6MB L3 cache that the two cores can share. The L2 caches are still stuck at 512KB but with a large 6MB L3, there’s very little to complain about. The unlocked Black Edition part runs at 3.1GHz and retails for $102.