The 'Black Edition' Phenom Is Ready, the FXes Go Back to Closet

Advanced Micro Devices recently promised that the Phenom 9600 "Black Edition" will be ready until December, but the high-end AMD Phenom FX processors will be subject of delay for an undetermined period of time. We have already got used to AMD delaying each major product, so there should be no problem; at least the 9600 chip is surely to roll out soon.

AMD's Phenom "Black Edition" 9600 will operate at a clock speed of t 2.30 GHz and will feature a 2 MB shared L3 cache with a dedicated L2 of 512 KB per core, just like the Phenom 9600. The "Black Edition" is special in terms of overclocking only, because the processor's clock multiplier is unlocked and the enthusiasts may take the clock much higher than the original specs without a hassle. The CPU also integrates support for dual-channel PC2-8500 (DDR2 1066MHz).

The "Black Edition" Phenom 9600 processor makes it easy for both the average users and the overclocking fanatics to take their CPUs to unmatched performance peaks without additional hardware or software, keeping at a minimum the amount of implied work. All they need is to incrase the HyperTransport bus speed � set at a default value of 200 MHz � that would increase not only the CPU speed, but also increases the HT bus and memory frequency. This overclocking opportunity was to be seen only on AMDs high end chips, such as the AMD Athlon 64 FX CPUs, whose retail prices would dangerously swing around $1000.

The Phenom FX line as well as the Phenoms over 2.5 GHz have to go back to closet for now due to the TLB errata on the Level 3 cache that would render the system inoperable under high loads. The company said that this erratic behavior can be controlled via a BIOS fix for the hosting motherboard, but AMD has not disclosed the date when 2.4+ GHz will hit the market.

Since the Black edition is sure to range beyond the troublesome 2.4 GHz, it is unclear if an overclocked "Black Edition" Phenom would still face the instability issue.