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Upon the launch of AMDs first two Phenom II processors, the X4 940 Black Edition, and, X4 920, it was clear AMD's CPU division was largely back on track. These new CPUs ran considerably faster than the first generation Phenoms yet consumed less power and produced much less heat, which is pretty much the holy trinity as far as processor design/upgrades go. Also, the fact they still weren't as fast as Intel's flagship processors was not of too much concern because AMD was offering its chips at such low prices.

A few weeks later and we now have the second half of the Phenom II story. You see, those first two CPUs used AMD's existing AM2+ socket and were only compatible with DDR2 memory. Now we have three* more processors that are based on the same core technology but use a new socket type called AM3 and support DDR3 memory at up to 1,333MHz (there's also unofficial support for 1,600MHz on some motherboards). Not only that, though, they're also backwards compatible with AM2+ motherboards and still support DDR2 memory. So the theory is you can keep your existing motherboard and upgrade to one of these CPUs then further down the road you can swap your motherboard and RAM but not have to update your processor.

There is a slight flaw to this logic, though. AMD has neglected to make any of these AM3 CPUs even as fast as the 940 Black Edition, let alone the fastest Intel chips, so it seems unlikely you'd want to fork out for one of these relatively slow CPUs now and keep it when you do a motherboard upgrade in six months/year's time. Rather than just upgrade the whole lot. Nevertheless, if you'd like to take it, the option's there.

The new CPUs consist of two new triple cores, which like the previous triple core products are made from quad core dies that have a faulty core (don't let that worry you though). One of these, the X3 720 Black Edition, has an unlocked multiplier so it should in theory be a budget overclocker's dream. Conversely, the only quad core of the bunch uses a locked multiplier and runs at a modest 2.6GHz.

To make things extra complicated these CPUs only partially support their stated 1,333MHz (let alone the aforementioned 1,600MHz) memory. To get your memory running at 1,333MHz only one DIMM can be used per memory channel (i.e. only two slots, out of the four that are commonly available, can be occupied). If more than one DIMM is used per channel the whole lot will be clocked back to 1,066MHz. Suffice to say, this isn't ideal as it effectively limits you to 4GB of memory (if you want to run at full speed), which is the base line for an enthusiast system nowadays. Then again, for most people the difference in performance that results from the drop in memory bandwidth when using 1,066MHz memory as opposed to 1,333MHz is going to be next to impossible to spot.

With that introduction over, let's get down to the meat and two veg of this review, the testing.

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*There are actually two more non-retail versions available as well.

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