AMD's 3.2 GHz Phenom II X4 955 Dated

Looks as though AMD's Phenom II X4 955 CPU is finally getting a street date: April 20

It's no secret that AMD's quad-core AM3 Phenom II is expected to hit the market in April, and for weeks--possibly months--speculations and rumors have been tossed around like a hot potato, dictating exactly when the flagship processor will actually appear. At this moment, the April 20 date may still be only speculation, but this report seems confident in its forecast, and hopefully, it rings true.

The current reigning Phenom II X4 champion, the AM2+-based 940 released back in January, offers a nice core speed of 3 GHz, 2 MB (4x 512 KB) of L2 cache, 6 MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 125W. However, come next month, the 955 will become the top dog of the quad-core Phenom II family, offering a faster clock speed of 3.2 GHz--a 200 MHz increase over the previous 940 processor. Additionally, the new processor will also bring to the table AM3 socket compatibility, and support for dual channel DDR2 and DDR3 memory. However, everything else--L2, L3, TDP and 45nm processing--will remain unchanged.

Originally, the 3.1 GHz Phenom II X4 950 was scheduled to hit the market in Q2 2009, however AMD scrapped the idea, and decided to go forward with the 955 version instead.