The abbreviation for Advanced Micro Devices is AMD. It is an American multinational company based in California. It generally develops computer processors and technologies related to consumer and business markets.
AMD brought two of the popular processors in the market, namely Phenom and Athlon. The new versions are also launched as Phenom II and Athlon II. Both versions are far better compared to the original ones. There are distinctions between the two that can be clear up by this article.
Phenom II vs Athlon II
The main difference between Phenom II and Athlon II is the presence of L3 Cache, which makes the difference of 0.30% depending on the application. The L3 Cache is present in Phenom II, whereas it lacks Athlon II. Most of the Phenoms are in the black edition, which makes overclocking easier due to the unlocked multiplier.
The Phenom II processor was introduced by AMD and brought the company back into contention with the space of £125-190. Compared to first-generation Phenom, Phenom II is higher in clock speed and sports more cache. There are new two flavors’ chips available: AM2+ (support for DDR2 memory) and AM3 (support for DDR2/ DDR3 memory).
The central processing units have one of the family members, namely Athlon II. in June 2009, the K-10 based Regor was launched which is a dual-core version of the Athlon II. This was followed by a series of versions as Sargas (single-core), Propus (quad-core), Rana (triple-core), and the Llano.
Comparison Table Between Phenom II and Athlon II
| Parameters of Comparison | Phenom II | Athlon II |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2008 | 2009 |
| Min. feature size | 45nm | 45nm to 32nm |
| L3 Cache | Have | Do not have |
| Clockspeed | High | Low |
| Power consumption | More | Less |
What is Phenom II?
AMD has one of the family members namely, Phenom II. It uses the 45nm multi-core processor with microarchitecture of the AMD K10. Phenom is the predecessor of Phenom II, whereas FX is the successor. In December 2008, the socket AM2+ was released which is a version of Phenom II by Advanced Micro Devices.
On February 9, 2009, the Socket AM3 version was launched with the support of DDR3, along with a batch of quad and triple-core processors. For the Quad FX platform, Socket F+ is required in a dual-processor system. On April 27, 2010, the next generation was released, namely Phenom II X6. In terms of the instruction set, it mainly comprises of MMX, SSE4a, SSE 3, SSE 2, SSE, x86-64, x86, and AMD-V
The Phenom II X4 version operates as the processor component of the Dragon Platform of AMD. It also includes graphics of the Radeon HD 4800 series and the 790 series chipset. In the Leo Platform, the CPU is the Thuban Phenom II X6 and includes the graphics of the Radeon HD 5800 series and the AMD 890 chipset.
The shared L3 cache size is triple from 2MB to 6MB and leads to a benchmark performance gain of 30%. The processor has cool ‘n’ quite as a whole rather than focusing on a per-core basis. When it comes to motherboards, Phenom II does not work with all types of motherboards.
What is Athlon II?
Athlon II belongs to a family of AMD and central processing units of multi-core 45nm. It generally aims at the mid-range market budget and also has a lineup of complementary products to the Phenom II. Athlon II is derived from the series of Phenom II and is based on the architecture of AMD K10.
There are mainly two principal Athlon II dies like Regor (dual-core) with 1MB per core and Propus (four-core) with 512 KB per core. The design of Regor is a native dual-core with lower TDP. However, it does not consist of L3 Cache as its Phenom siblings comprise.
The Athlon II x2 200e –220 chips support less L2 cache compared to the rest of the Regor line. The Rana comprises of triple-core and derived from the quad-core design, namely Propus, with one core disabled. The core names of the variants of Athlon II consist of Regor, Rana, Llano, Sargas, and Propus.
In some cases, disabled L3 cache and cores are used in Phenom II Deneb die. It mainly includes AMD Wide Floating Points Accelerator, AMD Direct Connect Architecture, AMD Digital Media XPress 2.0 Technology, Hyper Transport Technology, and AMD PowerNow! Technology.
Main Differences Between Phenom II and Athlon II
- The processors of Phenom II come with four cores. On the flip side, Athlon II does not comprise any disabled cores, and that’s why it comes with a tri-core design.
- When it comes to motherboards, Phenom II does not work with all types of motherboards. But Athlon II supports all types of motherboards.
- The core names of the variants of Phenom II are Zosam (X4), Heka (X3), Thuban (X6), Propus (X4 840 and 850), Deneb (X4), and Callisto (X2), while Athlon II consists of Regor, Rana, Llano, Sargas, and Propus.
- In terms of the instruction set, Phenom II comprises MMX, SSE4a, SSE 3, SSE 2, SSE, x86-64, x86, and AMD-V, whereas Athlon II consists of only x86-64.
- In maximum CPU clock rate, Phenom II has 2.4 GHz to 3.7 GHz. On the other hand, Athlon II has 1.6 GHz to 3.5 GHz as its maximum CPU clock rate.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the popular processors, namely Phenom II and Athlon II which were launched by AMD. It is an American multinational company that mainly focuses on developing computer processors and other technologies related to the consumer and business market. These both are developed by the same company and still have many distinctions.
When it comes to L3 Cache, it is present in Phenom II, whereas it lacks in Athlon II. The clock speed of Phenom II is higher compared to Athlon II. When it comes to power consumption, in phenom II it is more in comparison to Athlon II. The Phenom II processor comes with four cores. On the other hand, there is a tri-core design present in Athlon II.
References
- http://www.cqvip.com/qk/95591x/200916/30420244.html
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6331291/