Final thoughts and ratings
Phenom13 Clocked in at 3.20GHz and able to interface with either DDR2 or DDR3 memory the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition AM3 is a good chip if it comes in at around the £200 mark. By dint of extra clock-speed it is able to give Intel's high-end Core 2 Quads - Q9550 and Q9650 - a run for their money and, in most cases, isn't too far behind the omnipotent Intel Core i7 920, either.
The '955 Black Edition is the AMD chip that should have launched at the turn of the year, but better is late than never. Pragmatically, place it on top of a 790GX AM2 motherboard, complemented by 4GB of quality DDR2, and you have the guts of a decent-enough system for ~£300. The steadily-dropping price of DDR3 - a 4GB DDR3-1,333 kit is now available for £53 - means that it should also look good when AM3-compatible motherboards start to drop in price. Overclocking, too, is as good as Phenom II gets.
The £240 Intel Core i7 920 is still the way to go for the enthusiast with cash to spend, based on the proviso of a 'cheap' X58 motherboard and 6GB of DDR3, costing some £550 all in. AMD and Intel both have a plethora of options - chip and motherboard - if you can't stretch to that, but, now, AMD's pricing is such that it gives Intel a hard time in the mid-range enthusiast space.
Forgetting about the chip in isolation, the winner is you, the reader, because competition has driven down pricing to levels where a sub-£1,000 base unit is just plain tasty - powered by either AMD or Intel. A £180 Phenom II X4 945 AM3 would play well, and the current Phenom II X4 940 AM2+ is a quality chip for some £165-ish.
AMD's new 45nm process has enabled higher clocks and the AM3 form-factor's given them a degree of additional flexibility. Couple this with now-sensible pricing on triple- and quad-core chips and we'd call AMD and Intel's sub-£300 CPU-and-motherboard combinations a draw right now: either is damn good value. Intel's quad-core Core i5 may well upset the <£200 CPU market. Until then, based on current pricing, AMD's Phenom II or Intel's Core 2 Quad are both quality CPUs.
Bottom line: The £200 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition AM3 CPU brings the fight to higher-specified Intel Core 2 Quads and knocks on Core i7's door. Core i5, when launched, should put it back in its place, but the AMD price-chopping machine may well be called into action again. The X4 955 BE is a good buy at £200 but a mediocre one if priced at £250.
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition AM3
HEXUS Where2Buy
The AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition is currently in stock at Scan.co.uk for £213.79 and at Ebuyer for £206.50.
The AMD Phenom II X4 945 is currently on pre-order at Scan for £196.73.
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