AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition

Manufacturer: AMD
UK Price (as reviewed): £240 (inc. VAT) (estimated)
US Price (as reviewed): TBC

AMD may have already raced ahead of Intel when it comes to integrating more cores into its CPUs with the launch of its 12-core Magny-Cours workstation/servers CPUs, but it’s taken considerably longer to release a desktop processor with more than four cores.

However, while Intel’s first six-core desktop CPU, the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition is brutally fast, it’s also extortionately expensive, retailing at £840, more than three and a half times the price of the quad-core Core i7-930.

In contrast, AMD has taken a completely different approach with its first six-core desktop CPU, the Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - pricing it far more reasonably.

Thus, at £240 the Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition is only £95 more expensive than the quad-core Phenom II X4 965 BE and only £10 more than the quad-core Core i7-930.


The X6 1090T BE is physically indistinguishable from the X4 965 BE as it’s also a Socket AM3 processor. This means it should work in any Socket AM3 or Socket AM2+ motherboard that can handle a 125W TDP CPU with a suitable BIOS update.

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition

• Frequency: 3.2GHz
  
• Number of cores: 6 x physical
  
• Core: Thuban
  
• Packaging: Socket AM2+/AM3
  
• L1 cache: 64KB L1 data, 64KB L1 instruction per core
  
• L2 cache: 512KB per core
  
• L3 cache: 6MB accessible by all cores
  
• HTT: 200MHz
  
• Memory: Dual-channel DDR2/DDR3
  
• TDP: 125W