ItвЂ™s also AMDвЂ™s first 45nm dual-core processor. The new Athlon II is actually AMDвЂ™s smallest dual core processor ever, even smaller than the original Athlon 64 X2. The table below compares the Athlon IIвЂ™s die size to other competing parts: Processor The entire die measures only 117.5 mm^2 and is made up of a meager 234 million transistors. Take two Phenom II cores, increase their L2 caches to 1MB, leave out the е…ѓ and youвЂ™ve got an Athlon II. While the most recent Athlon X2s are derivatives of the original Phenom architecture, the Athlon II is based on the new and improved Phenom II architecture. The Athlon II X2, to be specific, is a 45nm monolithic dual-core processor. This is the Athlon II, and itвЂ™s exactly what IвЂ™ve been asking for: Intel did a bang up job tarnishing the Pentium name with its clock speed rampage during the Pentium 4 days, but the Athlon brand still holds a special place in our hearts. AMD needs to introduce smaller die versions of its CPUs soon.вЂќ вЂњAMDвЂ™s Phenom II is very competitive, but the strategy does not have much long term staying power. As yields improve AMD should be able to make more of these cores members of the 900 family, but without a separate, smaller die there will still be economic inefficiencies at the lower end.вЂќ Again, great for consumers, but potentially painful for AMD in the long run. вЂњAMD in many cases delivers greater performance than the similarly priced Intel CPUs, but not nearly a large enough performance gap to make up for the difference in die size.

Amd phenom ii x2 class