Athlon 64 X2 7750 in Detail

First off we should state that while the 7750 carries the Athlon name, it is not based around the K8 architecture, AMD is slowly phasing out the K8 architecture in favour of the K10, and this is evident with the new CPU being released today.

AMD is not only releasing the Athlon X2 7750 BE (Black Edition) which we are looking at here, but also the Athlon X2 7550, with the difference being is that it is clocked at 2.5GHz - 200MHz slower than the BE, oh and not unlocked.

From the CPU-Z screenshot you can see that that design is based around a 64nm process codenamed Kuma. Kuma is actually a cut down version of the AMD Phenom processors that are currently out. First off it's limited to a dual-core offering, which is kind of evident by the X2 part in the name.

Sharing the lower clocked Phenom's specs the 7750 uses a 1.8GHz HT link, which also limits the integrated Northbridge's frequency to 1.8GHz. Thanks to the K10 architecture the new Athlon gets official HT3.0 specs allowing it to communicate with the external Northbridge at higher speeds and K8 based Athlon's cache memory has also changed thanks to the K10 architecture improvements. First off the L2 cache has been dropped to 512K per core (1MB total CPU L2 cache) however a 2MB shared L3 cache has been used - it is the same size that all Phenom CPU's share giving it extra memory storage on the CPU.

The CPU package hasn't changed compared to the older Athlon's. We have shot a Core 2 Quad 9770 CPU for reference. AMD has designed the 7750 to be a drop in replacement for AM2/AM2+ motherboards that support 95 watt or higher TDP.

Since the CPU is drop in replacement AMD has gone with using the older pin arrangement compared to Intel's LGA design that has been used since the Pentium 4 600 series CPU. Hopefully AM3 CPU's will start to use the LGA design like the newer Opteron's are starting to use.

For a full rundown on the K10 architecture that the AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 uses, please visit our Phenom X4 review here.