Amd 965 overclock: AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | Overclocking & Conclusion | CPU & Mainboard

Overclocking

 

After a rummage through our Gigabyte MA770T UD3P’s BIOS, we managed to overclock our Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition to 4.00GHz with a stock voltage of 1.400V. This was proven completely stable however our test sample seemed to have met it’s demise, while attempting to push it further. It should be noted however that this occurred while testing the AMD Overdrive Software Tool, and we believe that it was a voltage increase that occurred while testing the «Auto» overclock tool that killed our CPU. Sadly as a result, we’re unable to offer any CPU-Z Screenshots let alone performance results with the overclock applied. As unfortunate as this was, we were very pleased with the result of 4.00GHz @ 1.40V that was achieved. While it seems quite evident that the 4.00GHz barrier remains strong and the Phenom II continues to overclock slightly worse under a 64bit operating system this didn’t particularly matter as the result was achieved at a voltage that is considerably lower than those required with Phenom II X4 955’s and the older X4 940. One thing to note is that while it is possible to overclock by means of the base HTT Frequency, the unlocked CPU and Northbridge Multipliers available on the Black Edition Processor is an absolute godsend, allowing for easier overclocking but also to ramp up the frequency of the Northbridge, which is known to make the Phenom II faster clock for clock.

 

**19th September 2009 UPDATE**

 

A month on, we are glad to be able to revisit the AMD Phenom II X4 965 with a fresh sample. With our second attempt to overclock team green’s best we are here to report both good and bad news. The good news is that despite the electrical and thermal beatings exerted on our test sample, it remained with us and did not evaporate to that heavenly cloud in the sky. The bad news can infact be deciphered from the last sentence in that overclocking our second 965 Black Edition was not so easy. Unlike the first sample, which flew to 4.0GHz on stock voltage, the maximum bootable frequency was just over 3. 80GHz and the maximum stable overclock with a default VID of 1.400V a paltry 200MHz over stock speeds. We finally found ourselves at 3.70GHz with an operational voltage of 1.5250V and a modest Northbridge Frequency of 2200MHz.

 

 

 

While a processor is only guaranteed to operate at it’s intended frequencies, I still can’t help but feel as though I’ve opened the front door to be greeted by a flaming brown bag of excrement on my doorstep. Perhaps I am being unnecessarily harsh and perhaps borderline offensive for which I could apologise for but the bottom line is that purchasing even the finest of AMD silicon does not make you immune from the weaker of Deneb Core batches as we have clearly demonstrated. What we can demonstrate however is that even a comparatively small overclock is far from futile as can be seen below.

 

 

Conclusion

  

As the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition is a mere refresh of the previous 955 Black Edition 3. 20GHz part, we already had an idea of how the processor should perform and it did exactly as it should. Once again, AMD continue to fall behind in the Media scene, particularly with heavily multi-threaded applications and this will be a let down for those who predominantly use their system to encode/convert/encrypt gigabytes of data in huge batches. The Core i7 has proven itself to be a stunning number cruncher and nothing short of an updated architecture from AMD is likely to take said crown away from them. The Phenom II however fights back admirably in games, exchanging beatings with the Core i7 920. One must also consider that 1280×1024 in this day and age is a relatively low resolution to play games in and very few in reality would decide to play their games at such resolutions after spending considerable money on a gaming rig. Baring this in mind, it’s worth noting that games at typical widescreen resolutions today will be much more GPU dependant and chances are, the gains that one processor may have had against the other would be greatly diminished. Ultimately, AMD’s fastest processor is now another step in the right direction toward Core i7 performance and this is exactly what the brand needs to at least remain competitive against the upcoming LGA1156 Core i5/i7 range of mainstream processors.

 

As before, AMD wins the price:performance war with Socket AM3’s comparatively lower overall system ownership costs thanks to affordable motherboards and dual channel DDR3 approaching £40 for a 4GB 1333MHz set making it the best value choice. This has been a point that many including myself have been harping on about for months now however and this applies to AMD’s platform and not necessarily the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition itself. So we return to the original question. Is the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition worth it’s £180 price tag? Since we’ve already established that Core i7 clearly has it’s benefits in media based areas and that the AMD platform is relatively inexpensive, we should now consider what the 965 Black Edition offers compared to the rest of the Phenom II family. As it stands, the end user is paying £30 more for a 200MHz clockspeed bump and a voltage increase. But hang on, surely even a novice could take a Phenom II X4 955 Black, raise it’s multiplier from 16x to 17x and raise it’s operating voltage by 0.025V just to be safe? Maybe, but many put a high value on a guaranteed frequency of operation. Not only that, it should be noted that all of the higher quality silicon will now find it’s way in 965BE packaging, while the 955BE now consists of speed binned cores, which have either been allocated to a lower grade pile simply to fill a quota of a given model’s production or cores which genuinely can’t meet the 965BE grade. Overclocking is a risky business and your mileage may vary. A new product placement above the 955BE has introduced another factor into overclocking yields but as we’ve proven with two separate samples, anything can happen. At any rate, I’m tempted to say that the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition is not worth the extra outlay. This however doesn’t mean that I deem the processor a poor product but it is an opinion that is exactly why I would rather buy the £125 Core 2 Duo E8400 over the £145 Core 2 Duo E8500 for example.

 

**An updated verdict** — Now that we’ve observed the release of the new LGA1156 Lynnfield Core i5/i7 processors, one has to think carefully when purchasing processors in this price bracket. While it remains to be seen amongst our own testing whether the 965BE can hold it’s own against the £150 Core i5 750 processor, choosing either processor is not as simple as black and white. What we can say for sure however is that the Phenom II X4 965 offers an additional speedbump for a proven bang per buck platform and is certainly a solid performer but so long as it’s older 955 BE sibling exists for as little as £134.55 , it will never be everyone’s cup of tea.

 

 

The Good

— A consistent performer

— Comfortably performs alongside it’s rivals

 

The Mediocre

— 140W TDP makes this processor considerably more power hungry than some of it’s rivals.

— With the recent arrival of the Core i5 750, it’s simply priced too high

 

The Bad

— None

 

 

  1 — AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition2 — Overclocking and WPrime3 — Cinebench R10 64-bit4 — Image Editing and Video Encoding5 — Multi-tasking and Overall CPC Benchmark Score6 — Crysis Performance7 — X3: Terran Conflict Performance8 — Power Consumption (Idle and Load)9 — Results Analysis and Conclusion

Overclocking

Given AMD’s claims of huge overclocks we wanted to see if we could push our chip beyond 4GHz, and started our testing there. We know plenty about the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P so we set that up for a big HTT by upping the SB/HT and the CPU NB by +0.2V, and applied 1.9V to our G.Skill DDR3 memory.

First off, we tried a a vcore of 1.55V (+0.15V) and a combination of a 15x multiplier and a HTT of 270MHz for a 4.05GHz CPU. We know the Gigabyte board can handle such a high HTT but the CPU flaked out almost as soon as we entered Windows. Taking a trip back into the BIOS, we upped the CPU voltage to 1.6V, but to no avail, and 1.65V didn’t help either.

We therefore had to step down the overclock, using a vcore of 1.55V, a 15x multiplier and a HTT of 260, for a 3.9GHz overclock. This didn’t work either. Dropping the HTT to 255MHz (for a 3.83GHz overclock) didn’t work. Exasperated, we went very conservative, thinking that maybe the CPU just needs a bit of warming up first.

We therefore lowered the vcore to 1.5V (+0.1V) and used a multiplier fo 16 with a HTT of 240MHz to give us a 3. 84GHz CPU. This worked fine, priming away for ages stably. The CPU was fine at 3.92GHz (16×245) too, but 4GHz was too much and we were jolted back into BSODland. Adding more voltage didn’t help things, with the BSOD occurring earlier when we used a vcore of 1.55V or 1.6V than 1.5V. So much for AMD’s claim that the 965 BE is more tolerant of extra voltage — it looks like you’ll need to either get lucky with a low-vid chip or else break out the water-cooling in order to get it over 4GHz.

Just to re-cap then, our final highest overclock was 3.92GHz, achieved with a multiplier of 16 and a HTT of 245MHz. We upped the CPU NB and HTT Link to 10x to give us 2,450MHz buses rather than the poxy default 2,000MHz ones. The system refused to run with either bus overclocked by any more, as we’ve seen that 2,600MHz is really all you should expect. Unfortunately, the memory dividers of the Gigabyte meant we had to run our DDR3 at 1,306MHz as the next strap up would’ve pushed our memory out of spec.

We’ve included the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 in this review as we felt this is the most comparable CPU despite it being roughly £40 more expensive. Have a flick through the graphs, and you’ll see that the 965 BE holds its own nevertheless. To overclock the Q9650 from its stock speed of 3GHz to 4.01GHz we used a vcore of 1.45V and an FSB of 445MHz with the default 9x multiplier.

WPrime

Download from:www.wprime.net
WPrime is a multi-threaded maths calculation benchmark that counter-intuitively uses square roots rather than prime numbers. The standard benchmark uses 32 million numbers, calculating the square root via ‘a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions’. We’re not sure what that means either, but you can read the full blurb on WPrime’s About page. What we do know is that WPrime scales well across multiple CPU cores, and can push a CPU to 100 per cent load on all its cores.

To run the benchmark, first visit the core count to check that WPrime will load all physical and logical cores, and then run the 32M test. The results are expressed as a time taken to calculate the square root of the set of numbers (32 million in the standard test). A lower score is better.

  • Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition
  • Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition
  • Intel Core i7-920
  • AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
  • AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
    • 7.268

    • 5.713

    • 7.596

    • 5.884

    • 9.425

    • 6.305

    • 10. 700

    • 9.594

    • 11.524

    • 9.459

    • 12.906

    • 10.125

3

5.5

8

10.5

13

seconds (lower is better)

  • Stock Speed

  • Overclocked

For analysis of these results, please read the Results Analysis page.

1 — AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition2 — Overclocking and WPrime3 — Cinebench R10 64-bit4 — Image Editing and Video Encoding5 — Multi-tasking and Overall CPC Benchmark Score6 — Crysis Performance7 — X3: Terran Conflict Performance8 — Power Consumption (Idle and Load)9 — Results Analysis and Conclusion

Phenom 2 X4 965 — Bjorn3D.

com

The fastest out of the box frequency quad core ever released to date. The Phenom 2 X4 965 sports a 3.4GHz native frequency with good overclocking capabilities.

INTRODUCTION

Out of the box processors have been stuck at 3.2 – 3.33 GHz for quite a number of years now. Clock for clock they have been getting better but the top end speed has been 3.2 – 3.3 GHz. AMD pulled one out of the hat and fielded the Phenom 2 X4 965 with a native frequency of 3.4GHz. To achieve this record breaking frequency they had raise the TDP on the Phenom 2 X4 965 to 140w and bump the voltage to 1.4, previously the Phenom 2 X4 955 which ran at 3.2GHz was the flagship chip and it ran at 1.35v with a TDP of 125w. The Phenom 2 X4 965 promises blazing speed, an unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking,  and with a little maturity on the CPU family we’re hoping a little more overclocking headroom.

Click Image For a Larger One

You can see the HDZ965FBK in the CPU designation number and it’s telling you that it’s a Phenom 2 965 Black Edition. Please excuse any little Thermal Compound we might have missed we were a little excited about the CPU and fired it up as soon as it came through the door forgetting to snap any pictures of the CPU. That prompted us to go ahead and run all the tests then pull the CPU and get the beauty shots. Don’t worry though the Phenom 2 X4 965 is safely tucked back into it’s socket and setting on the test bench waiting for us.

CPU Name Cores Clock L2/L3 Cache HT Bus Socket TDP Price
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 4 3.4GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 140W $179
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 4 3.2GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 125W $165
AMD Phenom II X4 945 4 3.0GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 125W $159
AMD Phenom II X4 925 4 2. 8GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $139
AMD Phenom II X4 910e 4 2.6GHz  2+6MB  4000MHz AM3 65W $169
AMD Phenom II X4 905e 4 2.5GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $175
AMD Phenom II X4 810 4 2.6GHz 2+4MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $139
AMD Phenom II X3 720BE 3 2.8GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $104
AMD Phenom II X3 710 3 2.6GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $99
AMD Phenom II X3 705e 3 2.5GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $119
AMD Phenom II X2 555 2 3.2GHz   1+6MB 4000MHz AM3 80W $99
AMD Phenom II X2 550 2 3. 1GHz 1+6MB 4000MHz AM3 80W $91
AMD Athlon II X4 635 4 2.9GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $120
AMD Athlon II X4 630 4 2.8GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $102
AMD Athlon II X4 620 4 2.6GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $99
AMD Athlon II X3 440 3 3.0GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $84
AMD Athlon II X3 435 3 2.9GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $75
AMD Athlon II X3 425 3 2.7GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $72
AMD Athlon II X2 255 2 3.1GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3  65W $75
AMD Athlon II X2 250 2 3. 0GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $65
AMD Athlon II X2 245 2 2.9GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $61
AMD Athlon II X2 240 2 2.8GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $53

FEATURES & SPECIFICATIONS

Major feature enhancements for 45nm AMD Phenom II:

  • Enhanced Total Cache: 8MB
  • Cool’n’Quiet 3.0 Technology: Additional power states, significantly (~40%) lower idle power and lower power consumption under moderate loads
  • Increased frequencies
  • Massive headroom using extreme and experimental cooling techniques

Major silicon enhancements for 45nm AMD Phenom II:

  • 45nm immersion lithography manufacturing technology enables higher frequencies, tighter tolerances and lower current leakage
  • 6MB L3 cache (up from 65nm Phenom’s 2MB)
  • 2-cycles faster than 65nm Phenom L3
  • Increased DRAM bandwidth
  • Cache flush on halt: Core’s L1 and L2 flush into shared L3 after a core enters a halt state allowing the core to drop to a lower speed and save power
  • Path-based indirect branch prediction
  • 2x increase in core probe bandwidth
  • Larger load/store buffering / larger floating point buffering / reduced MAB (missed buffer) lifetime
  • Improved LOCK pipelineing: (LOCK is an instruction prefix) this improves performance when multiple LOCKS are in process simultaneously
  • FP MOV compute optimization: Floating point register-to-register move instruction improvements

Phenom 2 Dragon Platform Aspect

As you probably already know, AMD is the only CPU manufacturer that can field its own world class GPU’s and CPU’s, which gave birth to the Dragon Platform concept, a fusion of GPU and CPU, manufactured and designed to compliment each other. While this is a CPU performance review we will be covering the Graphics end of the Dragon Platform in yet another review of this new platform. In the mean time, we wanted to touch on some of the Dragon Platform aspects.

Video Processing on a Radeon GPU:

Continuing on the topic of platform-level performance analysis ATI has just released new Catalyst 9.3 drivers (for Windows and Linux) and a new version of AVIVO which provides a powerful tool for video processing. ATI Stream uses the massive parallel processing power of AMD graphics processors to deliver new capabilities to users that go beyond the traditional usage scenarios of graphics rendering and video processing.

Benefits:

  • ATI Stream harnesses the processing power of the GPU for high-performance, data-intensive computations over a wide range of applications
  • ATI Stream enables the hundreds of parallel cores inside AMD GPUs to accelerate general purpose applications
  • These capabilities will allow ATI Stream-enabled programs to operate with optimized performance (or with new functionality) for a variety of different tasks and from a growing number of software vendors
  • The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now included in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream
  • Every owner of an ATI Radeon HD 4000-series card automatically gains the ability to run ATI Stream enabled applications
  • Growing number of developers set to deliver ATI Stream enabled applications

ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter

  • Free download
  • Low complexity, high value application
  • Dramatically accelerates conversion of video files
  • Optimized for file sizes common to HD video

Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4000-series graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (find it in Catalyst Control Center’s “Basic View”) to achieve incredible performance levels in video trans-coding. We strongly urge you to test ATI Stream during your platform evaluation. You might consider it for an addition to your standard test suite. It should prove useful to test and quantify our raw performance, video processing prowess, and demonstrating the platform benefits of Dragon platform technology.

Upcoming AM3 Phenom II processors:

The AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE processor, launching in August 2009, is socket AM3 backwards compatible with AM2+ and support DDR2 memory on AM2 + and DDR3 on AM3. These new AM3 processors are compatible with both the current socket AM2+ and AM3, supporting both DDR2 and DDR3. This approach allows users, businesses, system builders, and OEMs to migrate across memory technologies at their own pace, when the time is right. AMD’s approach continues to be one of flexibility and compatibility to maximize platform longevity. In the current economic climate, we believe this approach makes more sense than ever.

Some Overclocking Tips (Black Edition)

Finding the maximum potential of your CPU is fairly straight forward with a “Black Edition” processor and the latest version of AMD OverDrive on a platform like the AMD 790GX-based motherboard which you’ll want to use with your processor. Here is some basic guidance to help get you on your way to voiding your warranty. Just remember, as always, “your mileage may vary.” Some chips will overclock better than others, but regardless… you roll the dice when you try.  You can find the latest version of AMD Overdrive: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_overdrive.aspx?p=1

Basic Overclocking Steps

  • Increase CPU multiplier
  • Use the HT reference clock slider in steps of 1-to-3 MHz for fine tuning (for less than 50MHz steps in CPU core clock)
  • Increase CPU Voltage (VID)

Voltage Adjustment

By default, the CPU voltage slider (CPU VID) in AMD OverDrive (3.0) maxes at 1.55V. which is plenty for the Phenom 2 X4 965 as max voltage is listed at 1.5v, we’ll probably go a little higher than that for voltage to see how high we can get (within reason).

Depending on the CPU and the cooling solution, the optimal voltage can be anything between 1.40V (an air-cooled part that prefers low volts) and 1.95V (liquid nitrogen at -196C… assuming your processor demonstrates good voltage scaling).

For air-cooling our experts recommend testing from 1.40V up to 1.55V in 0.05V steps in order to find the optimal voltage

NOTE: its quite possible that you start seeing negative scaling after certain voltage point. Remember, every CPU can be a little different

The only things you might want to adjust in the BIOS while overclocking are:

  • Disable Cool’n’Quiet
  • Disable C1E
  • Disable Spread Spectrum

USING EXTREME COOLING (Liquid Nitrogen / Liquid Helium / etc.):

Here’s a tip if you’ve already hit ~5GHz and are looking for even more overclocking headroom with EXTREME cooling. For temperatures below the -70 to -100°C mark we suggest switching the CPU to HT 1.0 mode. Just adjust the “HT Link multiplier” item in the BIOS menu to “1GHz (x5)” mode. The CPU NB clock can still run at default (or overclocked) value – just the HT Link interface requires this adjustment for optimal temperature margin. As per the experience of our internal team, most CPUs overclock well at -190°C using HT1. 0 settings. To get the best overclock possible, try setting HyperTransport to HT1 mode. This does not mean that HT Link must run at only 1.0GHz. You can tweak the HT reference clock to higher than the 200MHz default value which will increase the HT Link frequency and HT bandwidth. Try gradually working up with incremental jumps with an eye for a 300MHz HT reference clock (if possible with your chip). This would give a 1.5GHz HT Link speed.

HT3.0 Settings:

Though HyperTransport 3.0 is capable of higher frequencies than the northbridge/memory controller runs at, for best operation and performance, the HT speed should always be set to the SAME FREQUENCY as the memory controller specification for the particular CPU being tested. This can be done in the BIOS or in AMD Overdrive… or just left as-is (default settings) with proper BIOS support.

Example: the HT frequency for systems with the Phenom II X4 940 and 920 processors should be run at 1.8GHz, again the same frequency as the memory controller

DISCLAIMER

While Bjorn3D. com and AMD try to provide information as accurate as possible OCing is a crap shoot. Bjorn3D.com and AMD accept no responsibility for any attempt at OCing or any attempt at (what we have termed) Bone Head Stunts. No guarantee exists that you will be able to OC, or that your part will OC at all. It’s a crap shoot. OCing is a combination of carefully selected parts and OCing skill. As usual the contents on this site are provided “as is” without express or implied warranty.

In no case or special event shall Bjorn3D.com or AMD be held responsible for indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of income or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortuous action, arising in connection with the use or performance of this information.

Bjorn3D has provided a number of links to external sites as a service to our readers, this should not be construed as any link between us and any entity or individual nor can we be held responsible for any content on their site.

Bjorn3D.com reserves the right to alter amend or delete any content without further notice.

Any reproduction of information from this site in partial or full is strictly prohibited and will result in legal action unless you have prior written permission from the site owner, or Management Staff.

With that being said: Let the Bone Head Stunts Begin

AMD Phenom X4 CPU Specifications

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
Specifications
Processor Frequency

X4 955 (Black Edition) = 3.4GHz

Cache Sizes L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)

L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)

L3 Cache Sizes: 6MB (shared)

Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller * (See Note)
Memory Controller Speed Up to 2. 0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
Types of Memory Supported Support for unregistered DIMMs up to DDR2-1066MHz or PC3 DDR3-1333 (See Note)
Memory Bandwidth Up to 21.3GB
HyperTransport 3.0 Link One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4GHz full duplex (1.8GHz x2)
HyperTransport 3.0 Bandwidth Up to 16.0GB/s
Total Processor Bandwidth Up to 37.3 GB/s total bandwidth
Packaging Socket AM2+ 940-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
Fab location Fab 36 wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany
Process Technology 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
Approximate Transistor count ~ 758 million (45nm)
Approximate Die Size 258 mm2 (45nm)
Max Ambient Case Temp 65o Celsius
Nominal Voltage 0. 825 – 1.425 Volts
Max TDP 140 Watts
NOTE: * MC configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes

From the specs on the Phenom 2 X4 965 it looks to be a higher TDP later revision big brother to the Phenom 2 X4 955. The higher wattage might make it run a little hotter but the later revision should give us a better overclocking capability. Lets get some of the AMD CPU’s into a chart and look at the differences.

AMD CPU Specs
Model Clock Speed System Bus Speed Package Profile Voltage Max Temp TDP Total L2 Cache Total L3 Cache
965 X4 (Black Edition) 3. 4 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or Am3 0.875-1.5v 62°C 140w 2MB 6MB
955 X4 (Black Edition) 3.2 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or Am3 0.875-1.5v 62°C 125w 2MB 6MB
940 X4 (Black Edition) 3.0 GHz 3.6 GT/s Socket AM2+ 0.875-1.5v 62°C 125w 2MB 6MB
920 X4 2. 8 GHz 3.6GT/s Socket Am2+ 0.875-1.5v 62°C 125w 2MB 6MB
810 X4 2.6 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or AM3 0.875-1.425v 71°C 95w 2MB 4MB
910 X4 2.6 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or AM3 0.875-1.425v 71°C 95w 2MB 6MB
805 X4 2. 5 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or AM3 0.875-1.425v 71°C 95w 2MB 4MB
720 X3 (Black Edition) 2.8 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or AM3 0.875-1.425v 73°C 95w 2MB 6MB
710 X3 2.6 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket Am2+ or AM3 0.875-1.425v 73°C 95w 2MB 6MB
Phenom 2 X2 550 BE (45nm) 3. 1 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket AM3 0.875-1.425v 65°C 80w 2MB None
Athlon 2 X2 250 (45nm) 3.0 GHz 4.0 GT/s Socket AM3 0.875-1.425v 70°C 65w 1MB 6MB

Looks to be a faster speed with little change other than the higher TDP, you should note that only some motherboards support the 140w TDP standard and others support 125w so if your loving the Phenom 2 X4 965 make sure you select a 140w board. On a side note in case you missed it AMD is offering a wider range of Black Edition CPU’s (5) with an unlocked multiplier than we’ve ever seen, compared to the one uber expensive unlocked multiplier Intel has offered on the Core i7 LGA 1366 platform AMD is covering a lot of price points with highly desirable unlocked multiplier CPU’s.

Recommended Motherboards At Launch

  • Asus M4A785-M EVO
  • Asus M4A79-T Deluxe
  • DFI Lanparty DK 790FXB-M3H5
  • ECS A780GM-A Ultra (RS780M-A)
  • ECS A790GXM-A (RS780DM-A)
  • ECS A790GXM-AD3
  • Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P
  • MSI 785GM-E65
  • MSI 790FX-GD70
  • MSI DKA790GX Platinum

CPU-Z

Like we mentioned earlier the default voltage we see on the Phenom 2 X4 965 is slightly higher than it’s little brother the Phenom 2 X4 955. Out of the box the X4 955 ran at 1.35v with a frequency of 3.2GHz, here we are seeing 3.4GHz with 1.4v as default voltage. The Phenom 2 X4 965 should consume about ~10w more than the X4 955 but at an idle consumption should be almost identical. Since the two processors are nearly identical except in speed performance the newer Phenom 2 X4 965 should scale predictably.

For easy reference here’s a shot of the CPU-Z for the Phenom 2 X4 955.

Glancing back and forth on the two CPU-Z shots these two processors show they are cut from the same cloth. Except for the higher TDP, higher multiplier,  voltage and slightly higher frequency we don’t see any difference between the two CPU’s.

Pictures

Just a few short days ago pictures of the Phenom 2 X4 965 Black Edition box began popping up on the web so we thought we’d toss one of those shots in the mix.

Click Image For a Larger One

The Phenom 2 X4 965 we received for testing came OEM with no CPU cooler so we opted for a high end dual radiator water cooling system. The CPU itself shows no noticeable difference from previous X4 CU’s we’ve tested except for the CPU designation numbers which are individual to each CPU class.

Click Image For a Larger One

Utilizing the 938-pin organic micro pin grid array for the AM3 socket the Phenom 2 X4 965 retains backwards compatibility for the AM2+ platform which makes for an easier upgrade path than the competitors chips.

TESTING & METHODOLOGY

To test the Phenom 2 X4 965 CPU’s we did a fresh load of Vista 64 and applied all the latest patches and updates. We also updated the motherboard drivers to the latest versions and checked to make sure we were using the latest BIOS. Once we had all the patches installed, motherboard drivers up to date, and all the little things that need to be done to bring a system up to snuff, we cloned the drive using Acronis to keep the load safe from any little overclocking accidents we might have.

Speaking of overclocking accidents, we thought we’d privy you to a little information about that on this review. We tend to get in a hurry and when you do that things happen. We bricked at least two OS installs overclocking a little too aggressively. No fault of the equipment we assure you, but overclocking accidents happen, which is why we clone with Acronis and encourage anyone OCing to do the same. That spare drive that might cost you $50 is pretty cheap compared to reloading the OS 3 or 4 times during an extended overclocking session.

Test Rigs

We decided that since no matter what we do or say that the information about the review of Intel and AMD CPU’s people are going to look at them side by side and draw conclusions. To that end we used the same CPU cooler on all of the CPU’s except the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE. We used the Thermalright Ultra 120 with the same two fans for every CPU except the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE. We also used the Intel 80 GB Solid State Drive for every CPU reviewed.

We used the same hard drive, same CPU cooler except on the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE, and same GPU on all the platforms in an attempt to make the data as relevant as possible. We don’t think that it would be a fair comparison to use a high end SSD on the Intel platform and one of the top CPU coolers without extending the same courtesy to the AMD platform. To do so would make it a lopsided review and bias the numbers. So if you browse other CPU reviews one of the things you should be looking for and asking yourself is, “Did the site use the Intel review kit items for all the CPU’s or did they use a traditional platter drive for the AMD CPU’s?” If they did, it will make a tremendous difference in the platform numbers. We tested with and without SSD and the difference was large enough to invalidate data obtained using a platter drive against an SSD. To that end, we used the same hard drive, CPU cooler except on the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE, and GPU on all of the CPU’s contained in this review.

Hardware Common To All The Test Rigs

  • Thermaltake Tough Power 1200 Watt
  • Intel 80 GB SSD
  • Palit 4870×2
  • Razer Lycosa
  • Razer Lachesis
  • Top Deck Testing Station Chassis
  • Thermalright Ultra 120 w/2 83CFm Yate Loon Fans
  • LG DVD/RW
  • Please note that in this case we went with a high end Dual Triple Radiator Cooling System on the Phenom 2 X4 965, We used two 320mm Radiators, a Swiftech Micro reservoir, Swiftech Apogee CPU Block, and a Swiftech 1200L/hr pump. Performance with this cooling system probably exceeds the performance on the air cooling we used on previous systems.

So you can pretty much see that the only platform differences are going to be Motherboard, CPU, and RAM. In a cross platform test that’s about as good as you can get.

Platform Specific Hardware

  • Phenom 2 X4 965 BE CPU Equipment
  • Asus M4A78T-E
  • Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 (Run at 1333) 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the Asus M3A78-T you can visit the Asus Website Here
  • Phenom 2 X4 955 BE CPU Equipment
  • Asus M4A78T-E
  • Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 (Run at 1333) 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the Asus M3A78-T you can visit the Asus Website Here
  • Phenom 2 X4 940 BE CPU Equipment
  • MSI DKA790GX Platinum
  • Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the MSI DKA790GX Platinum you can visit the MSI Website Here
  • Phenom 2 X4 810 and X3 720 BE CPU Equipment
  • Asus M3A78-T
  • Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the Asus M3A78-T you can visit the Asus Website Here
  • Intel Core I7 965 Equipment
  • Asus P6T Deluxe
  • Kingston HyperX Triple Channel DDR3 2 GHz
  • For more information on the Asus P6T Deluxe you can see our review Here
  • For more information on the Core i7 965 you can see our review Here 
  • Intel Q6600 Equipment
  • EVGA 790I
  • Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1333 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the EVGA 790I you can see our review Here
  • Intel E8400 Equipment
  • Gigabyte EP45-Extreme
  • Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066 4 GB Kit
  • For more information on the Gigabyte EP45-Extreme you can read our review Here

     

We ran the Phenom 2 X4 955 BE memory at 1333 MHz even though the platform is fully capable of running the RAM at 1600, because that’s the rated speed the platform is built for. That, and it would be a sneak peek at the upcoming Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 review if we released those numbers now.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, we have all those beautiful machines here in one spot, up and running, not in the configuration we used in this review but, yes ,they are all here in one spot running and fully functional, along with a stack of GPU’s that would make a grown man cry, and a stack of high end RAM that would make you pull your hair out, and a stack of high end Hard Drives that will make you drool. We were deprived as children. We had the Atari console. We’re making up for it now.

Before we move onto the Testing Suite section lets get this out of the way. We ran all the CPU’s at stock Speed during testing, then we ran the AMD CPU’s at the best OC we could get in the time we had. We already know that some people are going to yell because we didn’t OC the Intel CPU’s in the review. If you want to see the Intel overclocks and results of those we have separate reviews for three of the Intel Core I7 CPU’s, each one contains OC information and testing. Feel free to browse those and compare numbers to this review. You can spend half a lifetime OCing and charting results in all the possible combinations. We run each CPU at stock speed for comparison purposes, then we OC the CPU being reviewed. You might not even get an OC out of the same model CPU and unless it’s on the same board with the same RAM and the OC is done identically, the numbers won’t be the same.

Test Suite

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark Vantage v. 1.01

SiSoft SANDRA XII Professional SP2

Everst Ultimate Edition v. 4.50.1330

Cinebench R10 64 bit

WinRar v. 3.71

Cinebench

“CINEBENCH is a real-world test suite that assesses your computer’s performance capabilities. MAXON CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software, CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. MAXON CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real world circumstances. The benchmark application makes use of up to 16 CPUs or CPU cores and is available for Windows (32-bit and 64-Bit) and Macintosh (PPC and Intel-based). The resulting values among different operating systems are 100% comparable and therefore very useful with regard to purchasing decision-making. It can also be used as a marketing tool for hardware vendors or simply to compare hardware among colleagues or friends.

We got the Phenom 2 X4 965 higher than 4GHz but since we had results on the X4 955 at 4 GHz we tested the X4 965 at 4GHz to see if there was a clock for clock difference. The Phenom 2 X4 965 being 200MHz faster out of the box we see it out running the stock Phenom 2 X4 955 at stock speeds. When we hit the OC on both CPU’s performance, as expected, is almost identical.

In the CPU ratio test in Cinebench we get to see what percentage of the CPU is used in multi-threaded application because there is a slight loss of performance from the 4 CPU’s on one die cooperating. We get a respectable 3.66 which is slightly higher than what we got on the Phenom 2 X4 955.

WinRar v. 3.71

This module in WinRar generates random data, which contains specially introduced redundancy, increasing the load to both the processor and memory. Data is then passed through RAR compression and decompression algorithms, and the output of the decompression algorithm is compared to the source data. If any differences are found, WinRAR then reports “Errors found – Yes” in the command window. WinRAR displays a size of processed data and compression speed, current and resulting, in kilobytes per second.

Once again we see the Phenom 2 X4 965 slightly out ahead of the X4 955 at stock speed and for some reason Winrar doesn’t seem to like overclocked CPU’s much and performance dropped with the 4Ghz OC.

EVEREST ULTIMATE

“EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

Everest Memory

We can see that the Phenom 2 X4 965 churns out 10.597 GB/s bandwidth at stock speed, since we are using a multiplier OC on the CPU performance is similar when OCed.

Memory write with the Phenom 2 X4 965 comes in at 6.961GB/s when overclcoked and 6.829GB/s at stock speed.

The Memroy read test shows the X4 965 at 9.361 GB/s overclocked to 4 GHz, and 9.332 GB/s at stock speeds and we can see that performance is still similar to the Phenom 2 X4 955. All things being equal that’s to be expected with the memory testing.

The Memory latency between platforms doesn’t mean much because by nature we have to use different kits, but using the same kit across all the AMD platforms gives us a good basis for comparison. We get a hair better latency out of the Phenom 2 X4 965.

Everest CPU

The Everest CPU tests show us that out of the box the Phenom 2 X4 965 gives a nice boost over the X4 955 but when overclocked to the same speed the twins perform almost the same.

Photoworxx is showing about the same results, the X4 965 comes out ahead at stock speed due to it’s 200MHz advantage but for some reason we got better results with the X4 965 overclocked than we did with the X4 955. Perhaps we just got a more solid OC out of the 965 than we did with the 955.

CPU Queen again shows the advantage of the Phenom 2 X4 965’s faster stock speed but overclocked the Phenom 2 X4 955 shows similar performance.

The Phenom 2 X4 955 is showing a pretty good lead over the Phenom 2 X4 955 at stock speed in the CPU ZLib test and once again the X4 955 closes the gap when overclocked.

Sisoft Sandra 2009 SP1

“SiSoftware Sandra (the System Analyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.”

In the Sandra Buffered Memory test we saw a slight performance increase with the Phenom X4 965 over the X4 955 but again the difference is so slight that it may be subtle differences in the OC we got. In general the Phenom X4 965 was an easier OC and the overclocks were more stable.

We see the advantage of the Phenom 2 X4 965’s 200 MHz higher native speed in the processor multimedia test and once again the Phenom X4 955 closes the gap when they are overclocked to 4Ghz.

We get the same results from the Processor Arithmetic test similar results when overclocked and the higher clock speed of the X4 965 stock out performing the X4 955.

3DMark Vantage

 

For complete information on 3DMark Vantage Please follow this Link:

www. futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmarkvantage/features/

The newest video benchmark from the gang at Futuremark. This utility is still a synthetic benchmark, but one that more closely reflects real world gaming performance. While it is not a perfect replacement for actual game benchmarks, it has its uses. We tested our cards at the ‘Performance’ setting.

Currently, there is a lot of controversy surrounding NVIDIA’s use of a PhysX driver for its 9800 GTX and GTX 200 series cards, thereby putting the ATI brand at a disadvantage. Whereby installing the PyhsX driver, 3DMark Vantage uses the GPU to perform PhysX calculations during a CPU test, and this is where things get a bit gray. If you look at the Driver Approval Policy for 3DMark Vantage it states; “Based on the specification and design of the CPU tests, GPU make, type or driver version may not have a significant effect on the results of either of the CPU tests as indicated in Section 7.3 of the 3DMark Vantage specification and white paper. Did NVIDIA cheat by having the GPU handle the PhysX calculations or are they perfectly within their right since they own Ageia and all their IP? I think this point will quickly become moot once Futuremark releases an update to the test.

In 3DMark Vantage we see the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE topping the chart in performance showing that the Phenom lineup is top notch for driving high end GPU’s. Please note that we always use the BFG GTX-260 216 for Vantage testing.

Overclocking

We tested at 4Ghz so here’s the CPU-Z shot we got of the Phenom 2 X4 965 at 4GHz, notice we are setting at 1.5v which is the top voltage recommended for air cooling. Clocking to 4Ghz was insanely easy, we just bumped the CPU voltage to 1.5v and gave the NB voltage a bump or two. It seemed a little more stable with a little bump to the SB voltage and we were good to go. Is 4 GHz the highest stable we got? No we got faster.

We hit 4.2Ghz which is 200MHz faster than we got from the X4 955 and overclocking the X4 965 BE was easier. Notice we are at 1.55v and we don’t recommend running a 45nm CPU at that voltage for extended periods. We went as high as 1.6v but we could not go beyond 4.2GHz stable. We might have gotten higher if we had more time to spend with the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE, but as often happens the speeds we attain are as much a reflection of the time we have as the capabilities of the CPU.

CONCLUSION

CPU testing consists of more than just synthetic benchmarks, synthetic benchmarks are good for measuring performance differences between CPU’s but it doesn’t tell you a lot about real life performance. To that end we drove the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE in every day computing and gaming for a couple of weeks and we have to tell you that nothing we did with the Phenom 2 X4 965 could drag down it’s blazing speed. Performance was very high at stock speeds and overclocked things got even sweeter.

Overclocking was just too easy, Raise the multiplier, up the CPU voltage, bump the NB voltage then test for stability. Maybe it’s the experience we have with the Phenom lineup but we made 4Ghz stable in just under a half hour. To get to 4.2 Ghz we had to fiddle with a few voltages but nothing that would make us reach for the aspirin bottle. We ran Prime 95 for about 3 hours on each overclock with no problems. Please note that this isn’t a particularly high end Asus board we are using. We used the Asus M4A78T AM3 board and it represents a good board but there are higher end boards out there. Using a higher end board might improve performance but I think we’ve shown that using nothing more than a good solid board we hit 4.2GHz and that just adds to the already great value of the Phenom lineup.

Now the question people will be asking for a while to come. Is it worth it to choose a Phenom 2 X4 965 BE over a Phenom 2 X4 955 BE. Stock speed out of the box we saw a good advantage from the higher stock speed of the X4 965, overclocked to 4GHz performance is similar. The Phenom 2 X4 965 was easier to overclock and took less time and effort to clock. We got a better overclock from the X4 965 BE than we did on the Phenom 2 X4 955 and we spent a lot more time with the X4 955 than we did with the X4 965. Depending on launch prices and what happens to the existing Phenom prices we’d have to say yes it’s worth it to pick a Phenom 2 X4 965 BE.

AMD has arranged special launch discounts for bundles of Phenom 2 X4 965 BE, Motherboards and Memory, discounts of up to $40 depending on the motherboard you choose making it more advantageous. With a projected launch price of $219 it’s not going to kill your pocket to have the fastest out of the box quad on the planet. Bragging rights on that alone should take the sting out of any extra cost. Once you see the performance in every day computing and gaming, then put he Overclock to it any doubt you might have had will quickly wither away.

We are using an addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn’t an aggregate average of the new rating system.

  • Performance 9
  • Value 9
  • Quality 10
  • Warranty 9
  • Features 9
  • Innovation 9

Pros:

+  Great Price/Performance
+  Nice Overclocking Headroom
+  Responds Well To Advanced Cooling Methods
+  Best Performance From AMD We’ve Seen To Date
+  Fastest Frequency Out Of The Box Of Any Current Quad
+  Fun To Overclock Black Editions
+  Entire Top End Dragon Platform Cheaper Than A Single Intel 965 Extreme CPU.

Cons:

  Hasn’t Caught Up To Intel Core i7

The Phenom 2 X4 965 BE, with it’s clock speed of 3.4 GHz, the fastest frequency Quad out of the box, has great performance, platform wise a great value, and it’s unlocked multiplier makes it a snap to overclock so it scores a 9 out of 10 and the Golden Bear Award.

CPU Name Cores Clock L2/L3 Cache HT Bus Socket TDP Price
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 4 3.4GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 140W $179
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 4 3.2GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 125W $165
AMD Phenom II X4 945 4 3.0GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 125W $159
AMD Phenom II X4 925 4 2.8GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $139
AMD Phenom II X4 910e 4 2.6GHz  2+6MB  4000MHz AM3 65W $169
AMD Phenom II X4 905e 4 2.5GHz 2+6MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $175
AMD Phenom II X4 810 4 2. 6GHz 2+4MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $139
AMD Phenom II X3 720BE 3 2.8GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $104
AMD Phenom II X3 710 3 2.6GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $99
AMD Phenom II X3 705e 3 2.5GHz 1.5+6MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $119
AMD Phenom II X2 555 2 3.2GHz   1+6MB 4000MHz AM3 80W $99
AMD Phenom II X2 550 2 3.1GHz 1+6MB 4000MHz AM3 80W $91
AMD Athlon II X4 635 4 2.9GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $120
AMD Athlon II X4 630 4 2.8GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $102
AMD Athlon II X4 620 4 2. 6GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $99
AMD Athlon II X3 440 3 3.0GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $84
AMD Athlon II X3 435 3 2.9GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $75
AMD Athlon II X3 425 3 2.7GHz 1.5MB 4000MHz AM3 95W $72
AMD Athlon II X2 255 2 3.1GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3  65W $75
AMD Athlon II X2 250 2 3.0GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $65
AMD Athlon II X2 245 2 2.9GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $61
AMD Athlon II X2 240 2 2.8GHz 2MB 4000MHz AM3 65W $53

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.

4GHz AM3 Processor

CPUs, Chipsets & SoCs

AMD CPUs

AMD ramps things up with the 3.4GHz clocked Phenom II 965 processor; flagship of the AMD desktop fleet.

Published Aug 20, 2009 1:38 AM CDT   |   Updated Tue, Nov 3 2020 7:03 PM CST

Manufacturer: AMD

7 minute read time

Introduction

AMD’s Phenom II has been one of least hyped up processors from AMD, mostly because it hasn’t been the success that AMD really wanted it to be. K10 was supposed to be AMD’s answer to Core 2 and while it does give the Core 2 line a run for its money, especially given the price range, the major competitor has AMD already aced with Core i7 and it’s not looking good for AMD in the price range now with Core i7 LGA1156 and Core i5 LGA1156 processors set to take on K10 in the mainstream. AMD has a bit to pull now.

While it’s not the runaway success, K10 really is a great value product. It’s a quad core processor with an on-die memory controller that not only supports DDR2, but also DDR3. It’s a perfect bridge processor for AM2+ users who want to keep their current boards and memory, but get a new processor. Phenom II gives you the option of a dual channel DD2 memory controller now with the ability to go to a dual channel DDR3 memory controller by simply putting the processor into an AM3 board with DDR3 memory support, something Intel hasn’t bothered to do. It’s DDR3 all the way with them.

Just recently we had a look at the Black Edition 955 Phenom II processor with unlocked multipliers. Today we have been sent AMD’s latest addition to its speed bin. Clocking in at 3.4GHz, this processor is the fastest clocked model to come from AMD, even when including the Athlon X2 line. Let’s see how well it does.

Closer Look At The Phenom II 965

The new Phenom on the block

We have already looked at the differences between Phenom II and the older K8 architecture, so there is no real reason to go over all of that again. There aren’t any major changes to the CPU apart from clock speeds. The default clock of the 965 processor is 3.4GHz with the same cache as the 955 we’ve already tested. The integrated Northbridge of the 965 runs at the 2GHz level rather than 1.8GHz which the cheaper models are clocked at. This doesn’t make for a huge difference, but any increase in speed is a good one.

AMD packages the latest processor in the same 940 pin AM3 socket which makes it fully backwards compatible with the AM2+ motherboards. Something we would like to see AMD finally do is go pinless like Intel; it’s generally a fair bit cheaper to replace a board than a CPU if a pin gets bent.

Overclocking

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=662003

Using multipliers, we managed to get 3.5GHz out of the CPU without much trouble. However, due to time constraints we didn’t get a lot of time to push harder. This we are going to cover very soon in a dedicated article where we test both the 955 and 965 overclocking potential.

Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time of testing the motherboard. Due to time constraints we weren’t able to tweak the motherboard to the absolute maximum and find the highest possible FSB, as this could take days to find properly. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking, or as new BIOS updates are released. «Burn-in» time might also come into play if you believe in that.

Test System Setup and EVEREST

Test System

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD2H (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Hard Disk: 500GB Western Digital SE16 (Supplied by Western Digital)
Graphics Card: GIGABYTE 9800GX2 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Cooling: AMD Stock Cooling
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit RTM
Drivers: Intel INF 9. 0.0.1008, ForceWare 190.38

Today we simply have the Phenom II 955 up against the new Phenom 965 in which we put them through our usual array of CPU testing software.

EVEREST Ultimate Edition

Version and / or Patch Used: 2006
Developer Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Product Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Buy It Here

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems.

First off is EVEREST. In the CPU performance, compared to the 955 there isn’t a huge amount of difference between the two processors.

Benchmarks — Sisoft Sandra

SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: 2009
Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk
Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en
Buy It Here

SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.

Sandra’s CPU tests show similar trends to EVEREST. The inter-core communication is very surprising. AMD’s processors are quite slow at core to core communication, despite their HT link that connects them internally.

Benchmarks — Super Pi

Super PI

Version and / or Patch Used: . 5 Mod
Developer Homepage: http://pw1.netcom.com/~hjsmith/Pi/Super_Pi.html
Product Homepage: http://pw1.netcom.com/~hjsmith/Pi/Super_Pi.html

Developed by some folks from the University of Tokyo (yes, Japan), Super PI is a small utility that does just as the name implies. It figures PI to a set number of decimal places. Since PI is an infinite number to the right of the decimal point, the utility measures the time it takes to figure a set number of places. It runs the calculations a set number of times and gives a time for the completion of the task. This is a simple and effective way to measure the raw number crunching power of the processor being used to compile the results.

Into our first real world number crunch and Super Pi shows that the Phenom II 965 knocks a few seconds off.

Benchmarks — PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 110
Developer Homepage: http://www. futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/pcmark-vantage//
Buy It Here

PCMark Vantage is the first objective hardware performance benchmark for PCs running 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. PCMark Vantage is perfectly suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista PC from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Regardless of whether the benchmarker is an artist or an IT Professional, PCMark Vantage shows the user where their system soars or falls flat, and how to get the most performance possible out of their hardware. PCMark Vantage is easy enough for even the most casual enthusiast to use yet supports in-depth, professional industry grade testing.

PCMark Vantage gives the Phenom II 965 the win over its AMD brothers, but still lags behind any of the Intel offerings.

Benchmarks — SYSmark 2007 Preview

SYSmark 2007

Version and / or Patch Used: 1. 04
Developer Homepage: http://www.bapco.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.bapco.com/products/sysmark2007preview/>

SYSmark 2007 Preview is the latest version of the premier performance metric that measures and compares PC performance based on real world applications.

SYSmark 2007 Preview extends the SYSmark family, which has been widely accepted by IT Managers, PC OEMs, press and analysts worldwide to support Windows Vista.

SYSmark 2007 Preview allows users to directly compare platforms based on Windows Vista to those based on Windows XP Professional and Home.
The new release also incorporates numerous new features and enhancements such as an improved GUI allowing streamlined start-up and run along with a heads-up-display (HUD) and automated error reporting.

SYSmark 2007 Preview is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Video creation, E-learning, 3D Modeling and Office Productivity. This new release includes a robust and refreshed set of applications.

Real world application tests also show Phenom II 965 managing to just ease ahead of the 955.

Benchmarks — Adobe Premiere Elements 4

Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0

Version and / or Patch Used: 4.0
Developer Homepage: http://www.adobe.com
Product Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/
Buy It Here

Our test with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 is performed with a raw two hour AVI file. It is then compressed into DivX format using the latest version codec. We measure the time it takes to encode

Premiere Elements encoding takes slightly less time on the 965 compared to the 955.

Benchmarks — 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 101
Developer Homepage: http://www. futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/
Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Synthetic gaming tests with 3DMark Vantage give AMD’s Phenom II 965 the win over its older brothers.

Benchmarks — Crysis

Crysis

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom Timedemo
Developer Homepage: http://www.crytek.com/
Product Homepage: http://www. ea.com/crysis/
Buy It Here

From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving gameplay, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G.

Real time editing, bump mapping, dynamic lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features the CryENGINE 2 offers. The CryENGINE 2 comes complete with all of its internal tools and also includes the CryENGINE 2 Sandbox world editing system.

There isn’t a huge amount of difference in real world gaming between the two processors here.

Final Thoughts

AMD’s strategy to keep their processors alive by undercutting the competition in the price market and making it up on volume is still working well for them. So far AMD Phenom II has already been accepted as the alternative to a high priced quad core for Intel. I mean, who can afford over $400 AUD for a processor alone? Not me, and AMD’s design really keeps things competitive. For 249 USD from Newegg you can have the fastest AMD processor currently available. Clocked at 3.4GHz and supporting your current DDR2 platforms, why wouldn’t anyone want one as the perfect bridge product?

It has taken AMD some time to finally get their act into the 45nm range, holding onto its 65nm longer than it should. AMD crippled itself at the beginning of the Phenom Line with clock speeds below 3GHz really hurting things on the marketing front, especially with Core 2 breaking 3GHz easily. AMD really needed its 45nm processor and its already showing the advantages.

The 965 shows that AMD is still able to get good speed bins out of its 45nm technology and hopefully soon we will see some more speed out of it which will make AMD even more attractive to end users. Coming in at 249 USD for a 3.4GHz clocked quad core CPU retail packed with heatsink and fan, it’s certainly got our thumbs up.

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AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition PCSTATS Review — Black Edition Overclocking

Abstract: AMD’s 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor represents a slight clock speed increase over the previous forerunner, the quad-core 955 Black Edition, and competes with Intel’s existing quad-core family of socket 775 CPUs.
 94% Rating:   

Table of Contents

Filed under: CPU / Processors Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website:
AMD
Aug 19 2009   J. Apong  

Home >
Reviews >
CPU / Processors >
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition

Overclocking Results:
stock max. oc
processor
speed:
3.4 ghz

3. 93 ghz

multiplier / bus speed: 17x 200mhz

17.5x 225hz

if you’re new to
Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent
Guides for some pointers:
Overclocking the CPU and Memory
Overclocking the
Videocard

Intel has its black Extreme Edition processors and AMD has its extreme Black Edition processors, but what do the two CPUs have in common? You
guessed it, both enthusiast grade chips are multiplier
unlocked!
Being ‘multiplier unlocked’ means the AMD Black Edition
Phenom II X4 965 processor can be overclocked from its default clock speed of
3.4GHz by changing the clock multiplier alone. It can be overclocked in the
standard way too, by increasing the bus speed, or a combination of the two.

That kind overclocking flexibility is
wonderful stuff. Plus, by simply changing the CPU multiplier from 17x, to
say 19x, the CPU will run faster without affecting the bus speed at
all. Multiplier-based overclocking just makes it easy for enthusiasts to
reach high CPU speeds with lower bus speeds — the best of both worlds really.

PCSTATS is going to use a combination of multiplier
and bus speeds to overclock the Phenom II X4 965 BE chip, our aim is
at least 4.0GHz, our hope is for 4.4GHz. Think the X4
965 BE
will reach it?

The Pre-Overclocking Warm up…

Before any overclocking began we first set the dual
channel Corsair
XMS3-1600C9 memory to run in DDR3-800 MHz mode. This way the memory
won’t be holding the CPU back. A standard AMD reference AVC Z7U7414001 heatsink
was used, but obviously a phase change cooler like the ECT Prometeia Mach II GT could have allowed us to push
the CPU much further. For the latest and greatest cooling solutions have a look
at PCSTATS’ sister website, Frostytech. com.

Overclocking is always luck of the draw, but if you
choose good PC hardware the system likely won’t hold the CPU back before it
reaches its limits. PCSTATS has selected a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, 750W
PC Power and Cooling power supply, and two sticks of Corsair XMS3-1600C9 DDR3 memory.

Let’s getting down to business. The Phenom II X4
965 BE uses a 17x multiplier by default, so we quickly bumped that up to
17.5x, then 18x… 19x without any issues. I was able to push
the Phenom II X4 965 BE as far as 19.5x (effectively 3.9GHz) easily enough,
but moving to 20.0x caused the system to crash while booting Vista. While the chip
would POST at 20.0x, it wasn’t exactly stable so we settled on a maximum multiplier
overclock of 19.5x, or 3.90 GHz for the Phenom II X4 965 BE.

Not bad,
but I think the Phenom II X4 965 BE can still go faster.

Bus Speed Overclocking

With the CPU multiplier reset
back to the default setting of 17x, PCSTATS set about overclocking the Phenom II
X4 965 BE by bus speed alone.

The Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT board was a little fusy in
this regard, so it was a bit of a struggle getting the Phenom II X4 965
BE to POST at 240MHz bus. Unfortunately the 965 BE refused to boot
Vista at this speed too….

After a lot of trial and error, we
eventually had to settle on a moderate overclock of 230MHz bus speed. It’s certainly not
the highest bus speed PCSTATS has ever squeezed out of a socket AM3 motherboard, but it
did boost the overclocking result from 3.90 GHz to 3.91GHz!!

Bus + Multiplier Overclocking

For PCSTATS’ final round of overclocking, the bus
speed was reset to 200MHz and CPU multiplier to 17x, then we started increasing each
setting towards its previous maximum. It didn’t take very long before the Gigabyte MA790FXT motherboard
was running at 230MHz, and the multiplier at 17.5x — effectively 4.025GHz. The system
would POST, but not boot into Vista, so the bus had to be dropped down to 225MHz.

While your milage may vary,
PCSTATS settled on 17.5x multiplier and 225MHz bus speed which left us with a CPU
overclock of 3.93GHz! That’s a good 530MHz overclock for the AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU!

Next up, PCSTATS has several round of benchmarks to test
the Phenom II X4’s multi-threading capabilities and how it stacks up against CPUs like the Core i7 920!

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Contents of Article: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition


 Pg 1.  

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 GHz Socket AM3 Processor Review
 Pg 2. 

AMD Overdrive 3.0 and Dragon Platform
 Pg 3. 

Core-by-Core System Power Draw
 Pg 4. 
— Black Edition Overclocking — Breaking 4.4GHz?
 Pg 5. 

Test Specs + 32-bit CPU System Benchmarks: SYSMark 2007
 Pg 6. 

32-bit CPU System Benchmarks: PCMark Vantage
 Pg 7. 

32-Bit CPU Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra CPU / Memory
 Pg 8. 

32-Bit CPU Calculation Benchmarks: Super Pi, wPrime2.0
 Pg 9. 

32-Bit CPU Calculation Benchmarks: ScienceMark2, WinRAR
 Pg 10. 

32-Bit CPU Rendering Benchmarks: Cinebench R10, Bibble 5
 Pg 11. 

32-Bit CPU Rendering Benchmarks: POV-Ray, 3.7, SPECviewPerf 10
 Pg 12. 

32-Bit CPU Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks: 3DMark Vantage, 3DMark 06
 Pg 13. 

32-Bit CPU Gaming Benchmarks: Crysis, FEAR
 Pg 14. 

Core i5 or Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition?

Overclock AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE, how to?

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    Mobo: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H
    CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE
    Coolor: Stock (sad)
    RAM: 8GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz

    What I need is link to guides etc etc, all that can help me understand how to overclock and so on, not out after a mega overclocking, just a small tweak

    And its more for intresst and fun, then for making improvment on the computer

    /Thx

    Asus Sabertooth 990FX 2.0 | AMD FX-8320 @ 4.5GHz | Corsair H80i | 2x8GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866MHz Cl9 | Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Vapor-X GHz Edition |
    XFX ProSeries XXX 850W | Fractal Design Define R4 | Samsung 840 ProSerie 256GB | 3TB HDD

    Reply With Quote


  • 2011-08-29, 07:40 PM
    #2

    You proabably want to invest in an after-market cooler first of all to keep your CPU from overheating after the overclock. Check out this guide.

    GTX 560 TI stable at 1GhZ
    PCPartPicker Love it.

    Reply With Quote


  • 2011-08-29, 07:41 PM
    #3

    You dont overclock on stock cooler…you jsut dont…

    Reply With Quote


  • 2011-08-29, 07:44 PM
    #4

    You’ve got it easy, hehe. Basically all you need to do with a black edition is raise the multiplier. (CPU speed = bus speed, typically 200 x multiplier)

    You can usually push it a ways on stock voltage, which I believe to be 1.375. You’ll also want to turn off cool ‘n’ quiet in CPU options. When your computer bluescreens, or fails a stress test (recommended: Prime95) it’s time for more voltage. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure your cpu temperature doesn’t go over 55 degrees celsius in normal use. You can use a program like speedfan to determine the temperature.

    as I said, was not out after a hugh improvment will check out th eguide and start looking into it

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    • Overclock AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE, how to?

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    AMD Phenom II X4 Review 965 Black Edition

    It may come as a surprise that its Phenom processors have been AMD’s high performance chips since their launch in early 2008, but it wasn’t until the release of the Phenom II X4 965 BE that AMD made their fastest ever CPU. At 3.4 GHz, it finally surpasses the highest mark achieved by its dual-core brother Athlon 64 X2, which was released back in 2007 and ran at 3.2 GHz (the last 955 BEs did this, but do not surpass it) . Not that Intel was no different, its highest clocked chip was a single-core Pentium 4 570 that ran at 3.8GHz and was around 2004.


    The point is that over the past few years the focus has been on improving overall performance, and this can be achieved much more easily by using multiple cores rather than a single faster core. In addition, the design of the processor has been improved so that performance improvements (even in single-core components) have occurred without increasing the clock speed. So it took us several years to get back to where the original clock speed was at the level it once was. However, this is enough for a history lesson. Let’s start with the review itself.

    Thus, the Phenom II X4 965 BE is a quad-core processor built on the same architecture and manufacturing process as the previous leader AMD 955 BE. At least that’s how it looks from the outside. AMD has assured us that they have revised their manufacturing process a bit to allow for such a fast processor. However, despite the name of the processor, there doesn’t seem to be any black magic involved, as the main reason AMD seems to have been able to achieve such high clock speeds is to increase the default CPU voltage. 955 used a reference voltage of 1.32V, while the 965 BE boosted this to 1.4V. This may seem like a small change, but it means that the TDP of the processor has also increased from 125W to 140W.

    The
    is all in stark contrast to the upcoming Intel Core i5 processors, which use a new architecture and use new technology to deliver better performance without increasing overall clock speed and therefore power consumption or heat dissipation. Unfortunately, AMD’s next generation of processors isn’t ready yet, so it has had to constantly try to increase clock speeds to stay competitive with Intel. However, until the Core i5 arrives, we can’t say for sure which one is better.


    The rest of the features of the 965 BE are the same as we’ve seen in previous Phenom IIs, so if you want to get a full understanding of the chip’s architectural intricacies, check out our Phenom II X4 810 and Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition reviews. as well as Phenom II X4 940.


    With so little to say about features, the last thing to note before we move on to testing is that this processor is a Black Edition. This refers to the unlocked multiplier, which theoretically makes overclocking very easy. However, as we found in 955 BE, setting the multiplier isn’t the only way to efficiently overclock a processor, and competing Intel chips have been able to keep up with overclocking levels by tweaking other settings. Let’s see how this chip will work at the moment.

    «‘Test rig»‘


    The 965 BE’s main competitor is currently the Intel Core 2 Q9550, so that’s the processor we’ll be focusing on. However, since this is AMD’s fastest chip, we’ve also included the results for the fastest Intel Core i7 9 chip. 65 (hmm, there are coincidences of names). The next closest competitor from Intel is the Core i7 920, and AMD’s second fastest chip is the 955 BE, so we’ve included those two as well.


    «Common System Components»

    AMD ATI Radeon 4870 X2 Video Card
    Western Digital Raptor X 150 GB Hard Drive
    Pioneer BDC-S02BK Blu-ray Drive

    2 x 1 GB RAM Qimonda IMSh2GU03A1F1C-10F PC3-8503 900 D023 Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.


    «Core i7 test system»


    Asus P6T Deluxe


    «Core 2 test system»


    Motherboard Asus P5E3


    «AMD Phenom II AM3 Test System»

    Asus M4A79T Deluxe Motherboard

    «‘Results»‘


    Starting from our gaming tests, the 965 BE is truly impressive, clearly winning the low-res Crysis test, although it’s 1.9 in the high-res test.20 x 1200 benchmark is not enough for Intel Q5550. It’s a less rosy picture when we look at Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, where the i7 965’s multi-core power maintains a solid lead. However, the Phenom II X4 965 BE is definitely different from other processors in its price range.


    3D rendering has always been Intel’s forte, and while the 965 BE’s higher clock speed closes the gap a bit, our results in the popular Cinebench and POVRay benchmarks show it still has room to catch up. It’s a similar story in our file compression tests, although the margins are so small that we wouldn’t call it that convincing. In addition, against its price competitor, Q9550, 965 BE keeps its positions.


    As far as mp3 encoding is concerned, it’s pretty close until we look at the DBPowerAmp batch test. Here, again, the i7’s multi-core advantage pays dividends, but more importantly, the Q9550 doesn’t break away from the 965 BE.


    Our penultimate test in image editing using Photoshop Elements 4.0. This is a really good test to demonstrate basic single core performance, in which case it demonstrates that 9The 65 BE is very competitive even with all the gains of the i7 965.


    Finally, we looked at video encoding performance using VirtualDub (running in single-threaded mode) and AutoMKV, which is a multi-threaded benchmark. In VirtualDub, it’s a close call between the Q9550 and the 965 BE, with the latter just coming out on top (but both still trailing both Core i7 chips). As for AutoMKV, it is essentially the same situation. Core i7s are simply more efficient processors and are still the choice if you’re looking for maximum performance. However, 9The 65 BE impresses with its price in terms of default clock speed. The real question now is how does it overclock?

    We started our overclocking attempts with the AMD Overdrive utility, but ran into problems very quickly. The software gave all sorts of false readings and generally just didn’t seem stable, so we resorted to overclocking through the BIOS instead.


    We started conservatively, increasing the multiplier from 17x to 18x for a total clock speed of 3.6GHz. It was absolutely stable so we continued on 19x for a total clock speed of 3. 8 GHz. It also seemed pretty stable, booting into windows and running some tests, but it froze after a while. So we raised the CPU voltage to 1.5V and found it to be stable. Moving on, we tried 19.5x and 1.55V to get a stable 3.91GHz, which was a good start.

    After that, we started experimenting more and more, until at some point we were able to run benchmarks at 4.19GHz (220 MHz x 19), although it quickly collapsed. With so many settings to play with, we’re sure it could be made stable, but we didn’t have enough time to really play with all of them and find the right balance, so we decided to call 3.91GHz our best with this CPU. However, as is always the case with overclocking, the price you pay for more performance is more power consumption. We have seen our idle system power consumption rise from 200W to 250W and load power consumption from 288W to 340W.

    The
    , in contrast, in our tests, Intel’s closest competitor, the Q9550, is overclocked to 3.4 GHz without any additional voltage, and these processors are known to run at 4 GHz with a conventional air cooler. However, the ease of overclocking the 965 BE will make us choose this chip.


    Finally, we come to the cost estimate, and this is where the 965 BE really starts to make sense, even considering its averages. A decent AM3 motherboard can cost around £70 while 9The 65 BE costs about £180 and the total cost of the system is £250. By contrast, the cheapest Core i7 motherboard you’ll find costs around £140, while the cheapest processor is £205, making the system cost £345. The Core 2 system does match the Phenom II system for the price, but given that the entire platform will be replaced within a few months and there aren’t likely to be more processors made for it, we won’t be ditching it now.


    «» Sentence «»

    The
    AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE is AMD’s fastest processor in every sense of the word and matches any processor available at a similar price in terms of performance. Throw in its unlocked multiplier to make overclocking easier and you have a processor worth recommending. Unfortunately, since Intel is set to release its Core i5 processors in the next couple of months, and according to preliminary reports, they will be very fast, they may be worth the wait. But if you’re looking for a new, affordable chip, AMD has you covered right now.

    «Games»


    «3D rendering»


    «File Compression»

    «‘ MP3 Encoding «‘


    Image editing


    ”’ Video Encoding ”’


    Power Consumption

    Unlike other sites, we thoroughly test every product we review. We use standard industry benchmarks to properly compare features. We will always tell you what we find. We never, ever accept money for a product review.
    Tell us what you think — send your letters to the editor.

    (Transmission) [Acceleration test] The floating speed of the highest level Dragon II 965 is broken by 16% due to 300 at the external frequency

    http://www. coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=224405

    [Overclock test] Dragon II 965 upper level floating point speed skyrockets by 16% due to 300 at external frequency


    Currently the top version of Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Supports Unlocked Frequency Multiplication Function Last time, on the AM2+ platform of ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe motherboard (BIOS version 1705), in an air-cooled environment, it was possible to directly increase the external CPU frequency for playback. Overclocking finally confirmed the processor frequency to 3.9 GHz, and the HT and NB frequencies were also increased to 2200 MHz.

    This time, on the AM3 platform of the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (790FX + SB750) motherboard, the overclocking method was changed to adjust to the external frequency of 300MHz, and the HT and NB frequencies were increased at the same time. What is the situation with super performance gap.

    For the hardware configuration of this air-cooling test, the AM3 platform is also served by a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (790FX + SB750) motherboard, 4 GB (2×2 GB) of Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 memory (9-9-9-24) etc. The resolution is set to 1920 x 1200. (Cool’n’Quite disabled)

    In the process of pulling up the external frequency, adjust the speed of the NB, HT and DDR3 memory frequency multiplier at any time to avoid resistance caused by acceleration failure due to excessive increase in external frequency. Finally, it has been confirmed that the frequency multiplier has been reduced from 17X to 13X, and the speed of NB and HT has been increased to 2400MHz. At this time, the external frequency has been successfully increased from 200MHz to 300MHz, which has been converted to a processing speed of 3.9GHz. As for the speed of DDR3 memory, it reached 1200 MHz.

    During overclocking, the operating voltage of the corresponding components also increased, so that U can be more stable after overclocking. I am listing BIOS voltage settings.

    In the control section on the same test platform, the results of the previous 965 preset hours are listed and compared together.

    Super Pi V1.5:(1M)
    Preset Clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4GHz): 1M — 20.842s.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9GHz): 1M — 17.941 S.

    wprime V2.0:(32M)
    Preset clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4GHz): 1M-11.137s.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9GHz): 1M — 9.691 S.

    3DMark Vantage(v1.01 Patch)
    Default Clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4 GHz): CPU score: 11548.

    300 at external frequency, HT/NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz): score CPU: 13133.

    3DMark 06(Patch 1.1.0)
    Default Clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4GHz): CPU Score: 4753.

    / 3 NB = 2400 MHz at external frequency — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz): CPU estimate: 5330.

    EVEREST_Ultimate Edition_V5.02.1784 Beta:
    Default clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3. 4 GHz):

    300 at external frequency, HT/NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz):

    AMD OverDrive(V3.0.2):
    Default clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4GHz): Total system performance is 7488 minutes.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz): total system performance is 9117 points

    7-ZIP: 32 MB dictionary file
    Default clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4 GHz): 12106 MIPS.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz): 12887 MIPS.

    Winrar 3.9:
    Preinstalled Clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4GHz): 2236KB/s.

    300, HT / NB = 2400 MHz at external frequency — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9GHz): 2376 KB/s.

    Far Cry 2 (v1.0.3, DX10) (200 x 17, 3.4 GHz): 18.2 FPS.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3. 9 GHz): 26.7 FPS.

    Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X(DX10.1):1920 X1200 4XAA。

    Default clock — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 x 17, 3.4 GHz): 40 fps.

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9 GHz): 43 FPS.

    S.T.A.K.K.E.R : Clean Sky Benchmark (dx10.1) : 1920 x 12400 2x msaa。

    Clock hours by default — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (200 X 17, 3.4 GHz):

    300 at external frequency, HT / NB = 2400 MHz — AMD Phenom II X4 965 (300 x 13, 3.9GHz):

    The results before and after overclocking the 965 are organized in a table to make it easier to directly understand the performance improvement.

    After 300 MHz FSB at the highest level of Dragon II 965, processing speed increased by about 14%. For floating point projects up to 16% growth, in the wprime V2.0 test environment with 32M software, this U was very close to the 10 second club. The Three Pigs series of programs shows that CPU efficiency can increase efficiency by up to 13%. Testing the game also showed that after overclocking 965, the number of game pieces has increased, and the FPS value in the Unigine Tropics Demo (DX10.1) has increased the most.

    Based on the processor speed up to 3.4GHz, the highest level overclocking performance of the 965 Black Edition in the Flying Dragon 2 generation is quite good. The test above directly confirms that this CPU has high performance at a given speed, but using its superlatives can also improve performance.

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    AMD Phenom II processor. AMD Phenom II X4 940, AMD Phenom II X4 945, AMD Phenom II X4 955, AMD Phenom II X4 965 Specifications AMD Phenom II X4

    Review and Overclocking at the price of processors for various types of PCs. The line of AMD Phenom II chips produced by this brand has become very popular in Russia and in the world. In turn, the modification of the X4 processors, related to the corresponding line, has become more widespread. These chips are characterized as high-speed, versatile and also optimally suited for overclocking. What are their main characteristics? What do modern IT-specialists say about the effectiveness of Phenom II chips in the X4 modification?

    Chipline Overview

    The AMD Phenom II family of processors is based on the high-end K10 microarchitecture. In the corresponding line of the chip, there are solutions equipped with a number of cores from 2 to 6. The X4 microcircuits belonging to the family under consideration also belong to the Dragon platform developed by AMD. Those chips that have 6 cores belong to the Leo platform.

    AMD releases AMD Phenom II chips in several proprietary modifications: Thuban, Zosma, Deneb, Heka, and Callisto. All of them are united by the technological process — 45 nm. But the differences between them can be very significant.

    Thus, processors in the Thuban modification are equipped with 6 cores and 904 million transistors, have an area of ​​346 square meters. mm. The size of the third-level cache on chips of this type is 64 GB, the same amount is reserved for instructions. The cache of the second level is 512 KB, the third one is 6 MB. The processors are compatible with DDR2 and DDR3 RAM modules. The power consumption of the chips is between 95 and 125 watts. Processors belonging to this proprietary line can operate at frequencies from 2.6 to 3.3 GHz, with the Turbo Core option enabled — up to 3.7 GHz.

    AMD Phenom II chips in Zosma modification have 4 cores. The cache memory indicators in them are the same as in the Thuban processors. The situation is similar with support for RAM modules. In terms of power consumption, there are chips within the Zosma line that run at 65W, but there are also those that consume 140W of power. The processors in this modification operate at a frequency of 3 GHz, in Turbo Core mode they can be accelerated up to 3.4 GHz.

    The Deneb line also has 4 cores. They are equipped with 758 million transistors and have an area of ​​258 square meters. mm. The cache memory indicators are the same as in the chip modifications discussed above. The same can be said about the level of support for memory modules and core technologies. Processors related to the Deneb modification can operate at frequencies from 2.4 to 3.7 GHz.

    The chips within the Heka chip line actually match the Deneb chips in terms of basic characteristics, but they only have 3 cores. From a technological point of view, they are Deneb processors with 1 core disabled. It can also be noted that the frequencies supported by Heka chips are in the range from 2.5 to 3 GHz. In addition, among the processors of this line there are no those that have a consumption higher than 95 watts.

    Another modification of AMD Phenom II chips — Callisto. In turn, the chips that belong to it are also virtually identical to Deneb processors, but they work on 2 cores. That is, they are Deneb chips with 2 cores disabled. The processors of this line operate at frequencies from 3 to 3.4 GHz, consume power of 80 watts.

    Among the most common types of Phenom II processors in Russia are those belonging to the Deneb line.

    AMD Phenom II chips related to this technological series are produced in the following popular modifications: X4 940, X4 945, X4 955, X4 965. There is also a flagship model of the X4 line — the X4 980 processor. Let’s consider the features of these chips in more detail.

    The first processor we will study is AMD Phenom II X4 940. The characteristics of this chip are as follows.

    The X4 940 processor operates at 3 GHz using a multiplier of 15 units. The chip is equipped with 4 cores. The manufacturing process within which the microcircuit is made is 45 nm. The amount of cache memory in the AMD Phenom II processor is 128 KB, level 2 is 2 MB, and level 3 is 6 MB. The set of instructions supported by the chip: MMX, SSE in versions 2, 3 and 4, 3DNow! The processor is compatible with technologies such as AMD64/EM65T as well as NX Bit. The maximum operating temperature of the AMD Phenom II chip is 62 degrees. The socket type supported by the chip is AM2+.

    It can be noted that the characteristics of the AMD Phenom II X4 945 processor are almost the same. The only difference is that the X4 945 chip can work on socket AM3.

    Characteristics and capabilities of the chip in the X4 version 955

    Let’s now study the specifics of the AMD Phenom II X4 955 chip. The characteristics of this chip are as follows.

    The processor in the modification under consideration operates at a frequency of 3.2 MHz with a multiplier of 16. It has a built-in memory controller — its bandwidth is 21 Gbps. The amount of cache memory of the processor does not differ from that of the models we have reviewed above, in particular, AMD Phenom II X4 945. The characteristics of the chip in terms of supporting the main multimedia and computing technologies are the same as those of the younger processors. The maximum operating temperature of the microcircuit is also 62 degrees. Among the most significant advantages of the AMD Phenom II processor in the X4 955 modification is compatibility with DDR3 RAM modules.

    What are the practical possibilities of the chip? You can pay attention to the results of some tests of this processor. Note that these were achieved by using the chip in combination with such components as:

    — ASUS M4A79T type motherboard supporting AM3 sockets;

    — 4 GB DDR3 RAM.

    Tests conducted by IT experts show that the AMD Phenom II processor in combination with DDR3 memory modules is noticeably ahead of similar chips installed in PCs equipped with DDR2 RAM. Therefore, a significant factor in using the capabilities of a microcircuit in practice is its addition to other high-performance and technological hardware components.

    Overclocking X4 955

    Consider one more aspect of using the AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor — overclocking. Experienced IT experts recommend using the multifunctional Overdrive utility in version 3.0 for its implementation.

    Of course, you can also overclock through the BIOS, but using the marked program allows you to solve the tasks without restarting the PC. Among the most notable features of the utility is BEMP. Using it allows you to greatly simplify the configuration of the processor in overclocking mode. This function involves establishing a connection between the Overdrive program and an online database that contains lists of optimal values ​​for clock speeds and other options needed to speed up the chip. The Smart Profiles option found in Overdrive is also very useful. With its help, the user can fine-tune the overclocking process of the chip.

    Overdrive also allows overclocking of the AMD Phenom II X4 processor to be adapted to the various applications running on the computer. So, for example, if any program operates in a single-threaded mode, then the user can use the appropriate software to reduce the frequencies of 3 of the 4 cores of the chip so that the 4th has increased limits for increasing the speed while maintaining the optimal operating temperature.

    X4 955 vs. Direct Competitors

    How competitive is this AMD Phenom II X4 processor version? The review we are conducting in terms of comparing the capabilities of the chip with analogues may not be detailed enough, but, again, we can examine the results of comparative tests of the chip conducted by IT specialists. The closest competitor of the processor in question is the Intel Core 2 in the Quad Q 9 modification.550.

    Chip performance tests show that the Intel solution is faster than the AMD chip, but not by much. The difference revealed by experts, most likely, will not be of practical significance when launching games and applications. In turn, such solutions as the Intel Core i7 in the 920 version are noticeably ahead of both the AMD solution and the Q9550 processor. At the same time, all 3 chips have a generally comparable market value. It can be noted that in the multimedia tests the AMD Phenom II processor in the modification under consideration is much more competitive than in the arithmetic ones. Thus, when testing, it is important to measure the performance of the compared solutions in different modes — in order to have a more objective idea of ​​the capabilities of the microcircuits.

    Characteristics and capabilities of the chip in version X4 965

    Let’s now examine the capabilities of the AMD Phenom II X4 965 chip. The characteristics of this chip are as follows.

    The standard processor frequency is 3.4 GHz. The voltage indicator on the chip is 1.4 V. Other processor parameters are generally identical to the younger models of the X4 line. It can be noted that the chip can be used on 2 types of sockets — AM3 and AM2+. The memory controller that is installed in the processor is compatible, in turn, with 2 RAM standards — DDR2 and DD3.

    Overclocking the X4 chip 965

    Let’s take a look at how successful AMD Phenom II X4 965 overclocking can be. It can be noted that the processors of this line are well adapted to adjusting the voltage level. So, for example, if some of the advanced solutions from Intel can work unstably at a rate of 1.65 V and higher, then AMD chips operate in such modes in full stably.

    AMD Phenom II X4 tests show that overclocking of the chip in this modification allows reaching the frequency of 3.8 GHz. By the way, approximately the same result can be achieved when accelerating the processor in the X4 modification 955. According to IT specialists, it is theoretically possible to accelerate the X4 965 chip to a frequency of 4 GHz, at which the stability of the computer is maintained. But if this indicator is exceeded, the processor may work in some modes unstably. According to experts who tested the version of AMD Phenom II under consideration, overclocking this chip allows not only to fix the advantages of the microcircuit in tests, but also to achieve a significant acceleration of the PC in practice.

    It can be noted that overclocking the processor in the modification X4 965 is possible not only through experiments with the main coefficients. Experienced IT professionals also use a technique in which chip acceleration is achieved by increasing the frequency of the north bridge. This can be brought to an indicator corresponding to 2.6 GHz. At the same time, it is important that the motherboard on which the processor is installed supports the required operating modes of the microcircuit.

    An extremely important aspect of overclocking any chip, including AMD Phenom II, is the characteristics of the cooling system. The one that does a good job when the processor is running in normal mode may not be able to ensure the stable operation of the microcircuit, and hence the entire PC as a whole. Therefore, it may be necessary to install a cooling system with a higher speed.

    When experimenting with overclocking chips, it is also useful to have programs that allow you to monitor the temperature of the processor in real time. Even the most efficient chip cooling system can become unstable at some moments — it is important for the user not to miss such moments and fix the chip overheating in time.

    The work that is directly related to the increase in processor frequencies should be carried out systematically, avoiding sudden changes in the values ​​of the corresponding parameters. If the chip works without errors and with acceptable heating at a given frequency, you can slightly increase it, and so on until the maximum performance of the chip is reached, which works stably.

    Flagship model — X4 980

    Perhaps the most attention should be paid to the flagship model of the X4 line — the AMD Phenom II X4 980 processor. Its BE modification, which has an unlocked coefficient, is very popular and therefore has become especially attractive to overclockers.

    In principle, the key technological capabilities of this processor are the same as those of, for example, AMD Phenom II X4 945. The characteristics of the chip in terms of cache memory and supported standards are generally the same as in the younger models of the line x4. The chip, however, has a fairly high level of power consumption — 125 watts. But for a high level of processor frequency — 3.7 GHz — this indicator is considered quite optimal.

    Flagship of the Phenom II X4 line: testing

    Testing of the chip in question shows that its performance is quite consistent with that of the leading models of the competing brand — Intel, made, in particular, based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. Moreover, in some tests, for example, in multimedia, the microcircuit outperforms some powerful analogs, such as, for example, the Intel Core i5-2500. Speaking of effective tools for measuring the speed of chips like AMD Phenom II X4 980, then you can pay attention to such a program as Everest. This program is a package that contains a large number of synthetic tests. Among those are CPU Queen, CPU Photoworx, CPU Zlib. These tests allow you to evaluate the performance of microcircuits in the complex.

    It is noteworthy that the benchmarks that are part of the Everest program are perfectly adapted to testing the speed of processors in the mode of simultaneous use of several computation threads. That is, during the tests, the cores of the chip can be fully loaded. The more of them, the higher the actual processor performance will be.

    IT-specialists consider the results of measuring the performance of the X4 980 chip in the floating-point operation mode to be very indicative. According to experts, AMD’s solution is confidently ahead of competing processors from Intel in the corresponding tests. Another notable tool for measuring the speed of chips is the PC Mark program. It is also characterized by complexity in the study of the capabilities of the processor. At the same time, the chip testing modes are as close as possible to their real conditions of practical use. For example, this program can provide processor testing by activating the web browsing mode, or converting one type of file to another.

    Checking the capabilities of the AMD Phenom II chip in this modification shows excellent results. Another popular test among IT experts is 3D Mark. It allows you to evaluate the capabilities of processors in a mode corresponding to the degree of load of 3D games. According to experts, the X4 980 chip is among the absolute leaders in its market segment according to the results of testing the speed of work in the 3D Mark program. Moreover, experts have recorded the superiority of this processor in 3D Mark modes over some Thuban chips, which, as we noted at the beginning of the article, are equipped with 6 cores.

    There are no problems with the stability of the X4 980 chip when working in the main screen resolutions. But as for the frame rate, in some modes solutions from AMD, according to experts, still look preferable to processors from AMD. However, in a real game process, the difference in frame processing speed between Intel and AMD chips, observed in tests, most likely will not be noticeable.

    Summary

    The first thing to say about the Phenom II line we reviewed, be it the X4 9 model65 or younger, AMD Phenom II X4 940, — the characteristics of the chips presented in it are very similar. Microcircuits differ mainly in frequency, in some cases — in the type of socket they support. All modifications of the X4 line of processors lend themselves well to overclocking and look more than competitive against the background of analogues from Intel. As for the technological capabilities of the AMD Phenom II X4 line of chips, the characteristics of the chips and the standards they support allow us to conclude that AMD has brought to the market fully advanced solutions that can be considered among the most advanced in the corresponding segment of chips. Processors belonging to the X4 line are equally optimal both for solving ordinary user tasks and for running demanding computer games.

    AMD Phenom II Processor

    Today, AMD is known around the world as a supplier of technologically advanced, high-performance, but at the same time affordable processors for various types of personal computers. In Russia, the line of AMD Phenom II chips, which is produced by this brand, is currently very popular.

    In turn, the modification of the X4 processors, which belong to the corresponding line, has also received great popularity. These chips can be described as universal high-speed devices, ideal for overclocking. What are their main technical characteristics? What do modern IT specialists think about the effectiveness of Phenom II chips in the X4 modification?

    General Information

    The AMD Phenom II family of processors is based on the high-tech K10 microarchitecture. In the corresponding chip line, there are solutions that are equipped with a number of cores from 2 to 6. X4 chips, which belong to the family in question, also belong to the Dragon platform developed by AMD. Chips with 6 cores belong to the Leo platform. AMD releases Phenom II chips in several modifications. These are Thuban, Deneb, Zosma, Heka and Callisto.

    All these microcircuits are united by one technological process — 45 nm. There can be significant differences between them. Since Thurban modification processors have 6 cores and 904 million transistors, this level of chips has a L3 cache size of 64 GB. The same amount is reserved for instructions. The L2 cache is 512 KB and the L3 cache is 6 MB. The processors support DDR3 and DDR2 RAM modules.

    The power consumption value is between 95 and 125 W. Processors that belong to this proprietary line can operate at a frequency of 2.6 to 3.3 GHz when using the Turbo Core option — 3.7 GHz. In the Zosma modification, AMD Phenom chips have 4 cores. They have the same cache performance as the Thuban processors. The situation is also with the support of RAM modules. As for the power consumption level of the device, there are chips in the Zosma line that can run at 65 watts.

    There are also those that consume 140 watts of power. In this modification, the processors operate at a frequency of 3. 3 GHz in Turbo Core mode. They can accelerate up to 3.4 GHz. The Deneb line of chips also has 4 cores. These processors have 758 million transistors. The area is 258 square millimeters. The cache memory parameters in this case are the same as in the modifications considered above. The same can be said about the level of support for major technologies and memory modules.

    Processors that belong to the Deneb modification support operation at a frequency of 2.4 to 3.7 GHz. The Heka line chips are almost identical to the Deneb chips in terms of their characteristics. The only difference is that they have 3 cores. Technically, they are Deneb processors with one core disabled. It is also worth noting that the frequencies supported by Heka chips are kept in the range from 2.5 to 3 GHz. In addition, there are no modifications among the processors of this line, the power consumption level of which exceeds 95 W.

    Another modification of Phenom II chips is Callisto. The chips that belong to this modification are actually identical to the Deneb processors, only they work on two cores. So they are Deneb chips that have 2 cores disabled. The processors of this line operate in the frequency range from 3 to 3.4 GHz. The power consumption value is 80 W. The most common types of Phenom II processors in Russia include representatives of the Deneb line. Chips that belong to this technological range are produced in the following modifications: X4 940, X4 965, X4 945, X4 955. There is also a flagship model in the X4 line — X4 980. Next, we will take a closer look at the features of these chip modifications.

    X4 940 Processor Specifications

    The first processor we will consider is the X4 940. within the 45 nm process technology. The amount of cache memory of the 1st level is 128 KB, the second level — 2 MB, the third level — 6 MB. The instruction set supported by the chip includes MMX, SSE 3DNow! Processor X4 940 is compatible with AMD 64/EM65T and NX Bit technologies. The temperature limit value of the X4 940 chip is 62 degrees. The chip supports socket type AM2+. It can be noted that the X4 945 processor has almost the same characteristics. The only difference is that X4 945 can work with socket AM3.

    X4 955 chip: features and capabilities

    Consider the specifics of the AMD Phenom II X4 955 chip. memory with a bandwidth of 21 Gbps.

    The size of the processor’s cache memory practically does not differ from that of the models discussed above. In terms of support for computing and multimedia technologies, the chip has the same characteristics as the younger processors. The maximum operating temperature of the chip is 62 degrees. The most significant advantages of the X4 955 include compatibility with DDR3 RAM modules.

    What are the practical possibilities of this chip? It is worth paying attention to the results of some tests of this processor. It is worth noting that these results were achieved when using the device in combination with the ASUS M4A79 motherboardT, supporting AM3 sockets, and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM.

    Tests conducted by IT experts show that, in combination with DDR3 memory modules, the AMD Phenom II processor is noticeably ahead of similar chips installed in computers equipped with DDR2 RAM. Therefore, in practice, a significant factor in the use of this chip is its addition to other technological and high-performance hardware components.

    X4 955: overclocking

    Let’s consider another important aspect of using the X4 955 processor, namely overclocking. Experienced IT experts advise overclocking using the multi-functional utility Overdrive 3.0. You can, of course, overclock through the BIOS, but using the marked version of the program allows you to solve the problem without the need to restart your personal computer. The most notable features of this utility include the BEMP function.

    Its use makes it possible to significantly simplify the settings of the processor in the overclocking mode. This function involves establishing a connection between the Overdrive program and a database that contains lists of optimal values ​​for frequencies and other options that are necessary to speed up the chip. Also very useful is the Smart Profiles option, which is available in the Overdrive program. With this option, the user has the ability to fine-tune the overclocking process of the chip.

    The Overdrive program allows you to adapt the overclocking of the AMD Phenom II X4 processor to the work of applications running on the computer. For example, if a program operates in single-threaded mode, then using the appropriate software, the user can reduce the frequencies from 3 cores out of 4 so that the fourth core has increased speed limits. At the same time, the operating temperature of the device will remain optimal.

    AMD Phenom II X4 955 vs Competitors

    How competitive is the version of the AMD Phenom II X4 processor we are reviewing? The review in terms of comparing this chip with analogues will most likely not be detailed enough. However, we can examine the test results of the chip, which were carried out by experts in the field of IT technology. The closest competitor of the model we are considering is the Intel Core 2 Quad Q 9550. Tests show that in terms of performance, the solution from Intel is slightly faster.

    However, the difference identified by experts does not play a practical role when launching games and applications. Solutions such as Intel Core i7, in turn, are noticeably ahead of AMD Phenom II X4. At the same time, all three microcircuits have a comparable market value. It can also be noted that the AMD Phenom II X4 processor is more competitive in multimedia tests than in arithmetic ones. When testing, it is important to measure the performance level of the compared solutions in different modes. This will give an opportunity to get an objective idea of ​​the capabilities of the microcircuit.

    AMD Phenom II X4965: specifications and features

    This chip has the following specifications: the standard processor frequency is 3.4 GHz, the voltage on the chip is 1.4 V. Otherwise, the processor parameters are identical to the lower models rulers. It should be noted that this chip can be used on two types of sockets — AM2+ and AM3. The memory controller installed in the processor, in turn, is also compatible with two RAM standards — DDR2 and DDR3.

    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Overclocking

    Let’s see how successful overclocking of the AMD Phenom II X4 965 chip can be. The processors of this line are well adapted to the ability to adjust the voltage level. So, for example, some advanced solutions from Intel can work unstably at a voltage of 1.65 V. AMD chips operate quite stably in such modes. Tests show that the AMD Phenom II X4 965 can be overclocked to 3.8 GHz.

    It is worth noting that approximately the same result was achieved when accelerating the processor in the 955 modification. IT specialists note that, theoretically, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 chip can be accelerated to a frequency of 4 GHz. This will keep your computer stable. However, if this indicator is exceeded, the processor may become unstable in some modes. Experts who tested this version of the AMD Phenom II X4 processor claim that overclocking makes it possible not only to fix the advantages of this microcircuit in tests, but also to achieve a significant acceleration of the computer.

    It’s worth noting that overclocking a processor in the AMD Phenom II X4 modification is possible not only by experimenting with coefficients. Many experts use a technique in which chip acceleration can be achieved by increasing the frequency of the north bridge. It can be brought up to an indicator that corresponds to 2.6 GHz.

    In this case, the motherboard on which the processor is installed must support the appropriate operating modes of the microcircuit. An extremely important point when overclocking any chip is the appropriate characteristics of the cooling system. If the system copes well with normal operation, this does not mean at all that it will be able to ensure stable operation of the microcircuit during overclocking. Therefore, it may be necessary to install a cooling system with a higher speed.

    When conducting experiments with overclocking chips, it will be useful to have programs at hand that allow you to monitor the temperature of the processor in real time. At some point, even the most efficient chip cooling system may not work stably. In this case, it is important for the user not to miss such moments and fix overheating in time. The work associated with increasing the processor frequencies must be carried out systematically, avoiding sudden changes in the corresponding parameters. If the chip will work flawlessly at a given frequency with acceptable heating, then you can slightly increase the frequency. This can be done until the maximum performance is reached, at which the microcircuit is still working stably.

    AMD Phenom II X4 980: the flagship model

    Perhaps the most attention should be paid to the flagship model of the line. Its modification BE is quite popular. Its advantage lies in the fact that it has an unlocked coefficient and therefore has become popular among overclockers. The key capabilities of this processor basically coincide with those of AMD Phenom II X4 945. In terms of supported standards and cache memory, the characteristics remain the same as in the younger models of the line. However, the chip has a rather high level of power consumption — 125 watts. However, for a high level of processor frequency, this indicator can be considered optimal.

    AMD Phenom II X4 980: testing

    Testing of the AMD Phenom II X4 980 chip showed that its performance is quite consistent with that of the leading models of the Intel brand, which are based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. In addition, in some tests, such as multimedia, the chip even outperforms more powerful counterparts, such as the Intel Core i5-2500. If we talk about effective tools for measuring the speed of chips, then you should definitely pay attention to the Everest program.

    This program is a collection of synthetic tests. These include CPU Photoworx, CPU Queen, CPU Zlib. These tests provide an opportunity to evaluate the performance of microcircuits in a complex. It is also noteworthy that the benchmarks that are part of the Everest program are perfectly adapted to testing the speed of work with the simultaneous use of several computational threads. This means that during the tests, the processor cores can be fully loaded.

    The more there are, the higher the actual processor performance. Experts consider the performance of the chip when performing floating-point operations to be an important indicator. The solution from AMD in the relevant tests is confidently ahead of competing processors from Intel.

    Another notable tool that can be used to measure the speed of chips is the PC Mark program. Its characteristic feature is a comprehensive study of the capabilities of the chip. The testing modes in this program are as close as possible to real conditions. So, for example, this program makes it possible to provide processor testing by activating web browsing or converting one type of file to another.

    Testing the AMD Phenom II X4 chip in this modification demonstrates simply excellent results.
    Another popular test among IT specialists is 3D Mark. It makes it possible to evaluate the capabilities of processors, in a mode that corresponds to the loads in three-dimensional games. Experts note that AMD Phenom II X4 980 is the absolute leader in its price segment according to the results of tests in 3D Mark. In addition, the superiority of this processor over some Thuban chips, which are equipped with 6 cores, was recorded. There are no stability issues when working in the main screen resolutions.

    Speaking about frame rate, AMD Phenom II X4 980 turns out to be preferable to AMD processors in some modes. In addition, in a real game process, the difference in processing speed between solutions from AMD and Intel, which is observed during testing, is most likely to be imperceptible.

    Conclusion

    In this review, we reviewed the characteristics of the AMD Phenom II X4 line. If we are talking about the AMD Phenom II X4 965 model or its younger version 940, then the characteristics of these chips are similar to each other. The main difference between the chips is the frequency, and in some cases the types of sockets supported. All modifications of this line can be overclocked.

    The devices look quite competitive against the background of similar solutions from Intel. If we talk about the technological capabilities of the AMD Phenom II X4 line of chips, then the supported standards allow us to conclude that AMD has brought to the market truly advanced solutions that look more than competitive against the background of similar solutions from Intel.

    The speed of caches and working with RAM is also important.

    Speed ​​in office use

    Performance in everyday work such as browsers and office applications.

    The performance of 1 core has the greatest impact on the result, since most of these applications use only one, ignoring the rest.

    Similarly, many professional applications such as various CADs ignore multi-threaded performance.

    Speed ​​in heavy applications

    Performance in resource-intensive tasks loading a maximum of 8 cores.

    The performance of all cores and their number have the greatest impact on the result, since most of these applications willingly use all the cores and increase the speed accordingly.

    At the same time, certain periods of work can be demanding on the performance of one or two cores, for example, applying filters in the editor.

    Data obtained from tests by users who tested their systems with and without overclocking. Thus, you see the average values ​​corresponding to the processor.

    Speed ​​of numerical operations

    Simple household tasks

    Minimum Average Maximum
    64 Memory: 82 91

    Memory

    86. 6

    43 1 core: 61 70

    1 core

    29.5

    76 2 cores: 121 140

    2 cores

    30

    Demanding games and tasks

    Minimum Average Maximum
    128 4 cores: 229 274

    4 cores

    28. 9

    146 8 cores: 232 274

    8 cores

    15

    Extreme

    Minimum Average Maximum
    143 All cores: 233 273

    All cores

    4.3

    Different tasks require different CPU strengths. A system with few fast cores and low memory latency will be fine for the vast majority of games, but will be inferior to a system with a lot of slow cores in a rendering scenario.

    We believe that a minimum of 4/4 (4 physical cores and 4 threads) processor is suitable for a budget gaming PC. At the same time, some games can load it at 100%, slow down and freeze, and performing any tasks in the background will lead to a drop in FPS.

    Ideally, the budget shopper should aim for a minimum of 4/8 and 6/6. A gamer with a big budget can choose between 6/12, 8/8 and 8/16. Processors with 10 and 12 cores can perform well in games with high frequency and fast memory, but are overkill for such tasks. Also, buying for the future is a dubious undertaking, since in a few years many slow cores may not provide sufficient gaming performance.

    When choosing a processor for your work, consider how many cores your programs use. For example, photo and video editors can use 1-2 cores when working with filtering, and rendering or converting in the same editors already uses all threads.

    Data obtained from tests by users who tested their systems both with overclocking (maximum value in the table) and without (minimum). A typical result is shown in the middle, the more filled in the color bar, the better the average result among all tested systems.

    Benchmarks

    Benchmarks were run on stock hardware, that is, without overclocking and with factory settings. Therefore, on overclocked systems, the points can noticeably differ upwards. Also, small performance changes may be due to the BIOS version.

    Cinebench R20 Single Core

    Intel Pentium Silver J5005

    197

    AMD FX-6300

    195

    AMD A8-5600K APU

    193

    Intel Core M-5Y10c

    191

    Intel Core i5- 2520m

    190

    AMD Phenom II X4 965

    1903

    Intel Core i5-2520m

    1903

    AMD FX-8320

    188

    188 188 188 9000 9000

    003

    187

    AMD Ryzen 3 2200U

    187

    Cinebench R20 Multi Core

    Intel Core i7-7500U

    739

    Intel Core i5-6300U

    739

    Intel Core i5-6200U

    735

    Intel Xeon E5450

    721

    Intel Core i5-5257U

    706 706

    AMD Phenom II X4 965

    706 9000 9000 9000

    Intel Core I5-5257U

    706

    ENTEL0003

    Intel Core2 Quad Q9300

    693

    Intel Core i7-7600U

    690

    AMD Athlon II X4 860K

    670

    Geekbench 3 Multi Core

    Intel Core i3-7167U

    6482

    Intel Core i7 -6500u

    6474

    Intel Core i7-6650U

    6422

    Intel Core i3-4130

    6379

    AMD Phenom II X4

    6358

    AMD Phenom II X4

    AMD Phenom II0141 AMD Phenom II X4 960T

    6358

    AMD FX-4300

    6346

    Intel Pentium G4560T

    6296

    Intel Core i7-4558U

    6273

    Intel Pentium G4520

    6268

    Cinebench R11.

    5

    Intel Core i3-6100t

    4.16

    Intel Core i7-7500u

    4.12

    Intel Core i3-4370

    9000 4.000

    9000

    9,0003 9000 9000 9000.0002 4.07

    AMD Phenom II X4 965

    4.06

    AMD Phenom II X4 960T

    4.06

    Intel Core i3-8109U

    4.05

    AMD Athlon X4 845

    4.03

    Intel Core i3-4360

    4.01

    AMD Athlon II X4 860K

    3.97

    Passmark

    Intel Core i7-4500U

    2538

    Intel Xeon E5520

    2536

    Intel Xeon X5460

    2530

    Intel Core i5-3230M

    2526

    Intel Core i5-5200U

    2518

    AMD Phenom II X4 965

    2518

    Intel Core i5-5200U

    2518

    Intel Core i5-5250U

    2506

    Intel Core2 Extreme X9650

    2482

    Intel Core i5-4300U

    2481

    Intel Core i5-4310U

    2478

    Tests in games Please note that the official requirements of developers in games do not always match the data of real tests.

    Also, the result is strongly influenced by the overclocking of the system and the graphic settings in the game. We test at high settings in FullHD resolution to get numbers close to real gameplay.

    The most popular config: motherboard for AMD Phenom II X4 965 — Asus M4A79XTD EVO, video card — Mobility Radeon HD 2600, SSD — SSDNow V300 120GB.

    Characteristics

    The data is not yet filled in, so the tables may lack information or existing functions may be omitted.

    Main

    Manufacturer AMD
    Release dateMonth and year of the processor’s availability. 10-2011
    Cores The number of physical cores. 4
    ThreadsNumber of threads. The number of logical processor cores that the operating system sees. 4
    Multi-Threading Technology With Intel’s Hyper-threading and AMD’s SMT technology, one physical core is recognized as two logical cores by the operating system, thereby increasing processor performance in multi-threaded applications. Missing
    Base frequencyGuaranteed frequency of all processor cores at maximum load. Performance in single-threaded and multi-threaded applications and games depends on it. It is important to remember that speed and frequency are not directly related. For example, a new processor at a lower frequency may be faster than an old one at a higher one. 3.4 GHz
    Embedded Options Available Two housing versions. Standard and designed for mobile devices. In the second version, the processor can be soldered on the motherboard. No

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    Back to the future #5 — AMD processor progress over the past few years

    AMD
    Progress
    Processor

    Back to the future No.

    5 — the progress of AMD processors over the past few years

    Egor Morozov

    In the previous articles of the series, I reviewed the progress of processors from Intel, as well as video cards from Nvidia, Intel and AMD. Now, as you might guess, let’s look at the progress of AMD processors. For convenience, we will take the same criteria as in the case of Intel processors — we will take processors starting from 2007 and test them in PassMark. But let’s change the type of processors — if in the case of Intel I took the processors that are installed in the iMac — that is, the middle ones, then in the case of AMD I will take the top, because unlike Intel, AMD had two lines of mid-range processors, one of which included top solutions (I’m talking about the Athlon and Phenom lines).

    1. AMD Phenom X4 9500 (4 cores / 4 threads, 2. 2 GHz, 2 MB L3, 95 watts TDP, 65 nm, 2007) — 1710 points.

      A very hot old man — it outperforms Core 2 Duo of the same years of the same performance twice in terms of heat dissipation, 20-30% worse than Core 2 Quad (AMD then was going through hard times, and Intel could not make a worthy response to quad-core processors from Intel, and in order to launch at least something on the market, I quickly “blinded” this Phenom from what was). It makes no sense in modern PCs — a simple Pentium will easily overtake this once top-end processor by 2-3 times.

    2. AMD Phenom X4 9950 (4 cores / 4 threads, 2.6 GHz, 2 MB L3, 125 watt TDP, 65 nm, 2008) — 3034 points.

      AMD did not waste any time and optimized the Phenom architecture quite well, and also slightly raised the clock frequency — although all this resulted in an increase in the already considerable TDP up to 125 watts (and for some processors — up to 140 watts!) But its they achieved — the top-end Core 2 Quads were only 5-10% more powerful. However, by modern standards, the result is still weak, and you can use this Phenom only in an office PC.

    3. AMD Phenom II X4 955 (4 cores / 4 threads, 3.2 GHz, 6 MB L3, 125 watt TDP, 45 nm, 2009) — 3980 points.

      Another revision of the 9000th Phenom line (AMD simply removed the zero from the back). Support for DDR3 has appeared, the L3 cache has grown to a respectable 6 MB. However, Intel had an ace up its sleeve called the Core i7, which was more powerful than the 955th Phenom… one and a half times. True, they cost one and a half times more expensive, so even then AMD was a salvation for low-budget gamers. There is no point in running modern games on such a processor, but undemanding Dota 2 and CS GO players will be pleased with such a stone.

    4. AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (6 cores / 6 threads, 3.5 GHz, 6 MB L3, 125 watt TDP, 45 nm, 2010) — 5398 points.

      Just a monster from AMD — 6 cores in a user processor in 2010, no one could imagine. However, despite the high frequencies and 6 cores, the processor eventually turned out to be at the level of the 2nd generation Core i5 — the old architecture, which AMD has only slightly changed for almost 4 years, is to blame. In general, the processor is at the level of the most powerful modern i3, which means that in conjunction with a mid-level video card, it is quite possible to play and work on it even now.

    5. AMD FX-8150 (8 cores/8 threads, 3.6 GHz, 8 MB L3, 125 watt TDP, 32 nm, 2011) — 7618 points.

      AMD was well aware that there was nowhere to squeeze the old architecture further, and in 2011 a new AMD line code-named Bulldozer entered the market (by the way, AMD has been releasing processors based on it for 5 years already, the situation should change in a few months with the release of new AMD Zen processors). The new architecture, a thinner process technology, slightly higher frequencies — all this benefited FX, but it still didn’t jump to the Core i7 level, but at least it reached the i5 level of the K line. Taking into account the fact that AMD has not touched the architecture much for 5 years, and the FX line overclocks well (it even broke the world record for processor frequency in overclocking), those who bought this processor 5 years ago can overclock it to the level more modern FX, buy a middle-high video card and forget about the upgrade for another couple of years.

    6. AMD FX-9590 (8 cores / 8 threads, 5 GHz, 8 MB L3, 220 watt TDP, 32 nm, 2013) — 10269 points.

      2012 can be safely skipped — having released the top-end FX-8150 in 2011, AMD took up weaker processors (FX 4000th and 6000th lines, as well as A8 and A10). In 2013, the FX-9590 was released on the supposedly new Vishera architecture — in fact, it is still the same bulldozer, only overclocked. The characteristics inspire horror and respect at the same time — not a single user processor has boasted of a heat dissipation of 220 watts, even top-end video cards have a significantly lower TDP. To cool such a monster, a water cooling system is required. But in the end, overclocking didn’t help much, because Intel also didn’t waste time in vain — the processor, as it was at the i5 level, remained the same.

    And that’s all — in subsequent years, AMD released only low-level processors of the A8 and A10 lines, including in the mobile segment, there were no more top-end processors. However, AMD recently introduced a new Zen architecture and promises a good performance boost — we are waiting for the new processors to go on sale.
    Summary table:

    And here we get an extremely interesting result — the growth of processors is linear, as in the case of video cards, unlike Intel processors, where a slowdown is clearly visible. The explanation for this is simple — AMD is now in the role of catching up, and therefore the growth potential is great: where Intel is optimizing what has already been optimized (Kaby Lake — the third Intel architecture at 14 nm), AMD is just releasing the first processor (Zen — the first line at 14 nm), so it can be predicted that the linear increase in productivity will continue in the future.