AMD Athlon 550: specs and benchmarks
Summary
AMD started Athlon 550 sales 23 June 1999 at a recommended price of $449. Based on an Argon architecture, this desktop processor is primarily aimed at home systems. It has 1 core and 1 thread, and is based on 180 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 550 MHz and a locked multiplier.
Compatibility-wise, this is AMD Slot A processor with a TDP of 41 Watt and a maximum temperature of 70 °C.
Primary details
Athlon 550 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.
| Place in the ranking | not rated | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Market segment | Desktop processor | |
| Architecture codename | Argon (1999) | |
| Release date | 23 June 1999 (25 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $449 | of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L) |
Detailed specifications
Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.
| Physical cores | 1 (Single-Core) | |
| Threads | 1 | |
| Boost clock speed | 0.55 GHz | of 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS) |
| L1 cache | 128 KB | of 80 KB (EPYC 9965) |
| L2 cache | 512 KB | of 2 MB (Xeon 6980P) |
| Chip lithography | 180 nm | of 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core) |
| Die size | 184 mm2 | |
| Maximum case temperature (TCase) | 70 °C | of 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ) |
| Number of transistors | 22 million | of 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X) |
| 64 bit support | - |
Compatibility
Information on Athlon 550 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.
| Number of CPUs in a configuration | 1 | of 8 (Opteron 842) |
| Socket | AMD Slot A | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 41 Watt | of 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P) |
Graphics specifications
General parameters of a GPU integrated into Athlon 550.
| Integrated graphics card | N/A |
Similar processors
Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
