Beyond the mere transition to Socket AM3 and DDR3 memory support, AMD may also have higher Phenom II speed grades up its sleeve. Well, a higher speed grade. Chinese site PC Online has nabbed an official-looking slide that mentions a 3.1GHz Phenom II slated for the mid-second quarter.
The slide calls this chip the Phenom II X4 950, and it specifies 8MB of total cache (presumably 6MB of L3 and 512KB of L2 per core), a 125W thermal envelope, DDR3-1333 memory support, and a 4GHz HyperTransport interface speed. AMD supposedly plans to release this processor simultaneously with a 3GHz Phenom II X4 945, which essentially sounds like a Socket AM3 version of the Phenom II X4 940—the chipmaker’s current fastest.
Other than that, the same document suggests upcoming Socket AM3 CPUs clocked at 2.8GHz or below will have 95W thermal envelopes. That’d be a step down from the 125 watts of the existing 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920. These chips should work happily in Socket AM2+ motherboards and cohabitate with DDR2 memory, too, although DDR3 could deliver higher performance.
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