14 DAY TRIAL // After a long and well-serviced life, some of AMD’s famous Penom II X4 and X2 processors will reach EOL in December this year. AMD’s Phenom II processor line is considered what “Barcelona” was supposed to be in the first place, and it’s the company’s first desktop architecture able to outperform Intel’s powerful Core 2 Duo line.
AMD’s Phenom II was launched in 2008, two years after Intel’s Core 2 Duo launch in the summer of 2006 and a year after the initial Phenom disappointment.
One of the most important improvements was the huge 6 MB level 3 cache, but there were many architectural and platform developments that actually aided Phenom II to surpass Intel’s Core 2 Duo.
Once Intel finally managed to take AMD’s example and integrate their powerful memory controller inside the processor die, Phenom II was again behind Intel’s i7 flagship.
The fastest processor that AMD announced today reportedly is the Phenom II X4 965 with 3.4GHz clock frequency and a high 125W TDP and the EOL will be effective this September.
The second best is AMD’s Phenom II X4 955 with its 3.2GHz Deneb 45nm SOI core that will be gutted in December this year.
There are three more dual-core Phenom IIs that will EOL this year.
These are the Phenom II X2 565 with 3.4GHz core clock, the Phenom II model 560 with a 3.3GHz clock and the AMD Phenom II X2 555 with a 3.2GHz clock.
All these are Calisto 45nm cores that are in fact fully fledged quad-core dies with two cores disabled.
These three potent dual-cores will EOL also in the last month of this year, as AMD is getting ready to launch the 4 GHz Vishera FX 8350 processor.