AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition AM3 Processor Review

A Closer Look
Like the other Phenom II X2 series of processors the Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition is sold as a dual core processor but is actually a quad core processor with two cores disabled. The internals of the processor are therefore identical to the quad core Phenom II X4 series of processors.

The Phenom II X2, X3 and X4 are all currently variations of the deneb architecture, each core features 64KB of L1 cache and 512KB of L2 cache each and shares 6MB of L3 cache between them all. The Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition therefore has a total of 128KB of L1 Cache, 1MB of L2 cache and 6MB of Shared L3 cache.

The Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition operates at a moderate TDP (Thermal design power) of 80w and is designed using the 45nm SOI (silicon on insulator) process technology. Its based on the C3 stepping which has been with us for a while now.

The Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition code name is labelled as Callisto which is AMDs code name for the Phenom II X2 Black Edition series of processors. The screenshot below shots a screenshot of the Phenom II X2 560 running at its stock speed of 3.3GHz.