Thursday, February 5th 2009
Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Tested
In the weeks to come, AMD will introduce its triple-core processors based on the 45 nm Heka core, starting off with the Phenom II X3 700 series. One of the first SKUs in the series would be the overclocker-friendly Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition. Based on the Heka core, it holds three x86 processing cores, 512 KB of L2 cache per core and a shared 6 MB L3 cache. The chip is specified to run at 2.80 GHz (200 MHz x 14.0), and features an unlocked bus frequency multiplier. It comes with a rated TDP of 95W. Turkish website Donanim Haber put an engineering sample carrying its specs to test on both DDR3 and DDR2 platforms based on Gigabyte's GA-MA790FXT-UD5 and MA790FX-DQ6, to find out its mettle.The new Phenom II X3-based test-beds were put through a series of synthetic and real-world performance tests that include Cinebench x64, PCMark Vantage, Fritz Chess 9, Everest, Hexus Pifast, and Far Cry 2. In its findings, it is seen that the overall jump in performance between the DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1600 platform is almost insignificant. The performance scales at pi-crunching scales fairly well with the chip overclocked. The overclocking potential of this chip, being a Black Edition variant, doesn't disappoint. The 2.8 GHz chip overclocked seamlessly to 3.70 GHz with Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer employed to cool it. The Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition is expected to release later in this quarter at an expected price point of 140€ in Europe.The complete review by Donanim Haber, Google-translated to English can be read here.
Source:
Donanim Haber
20 Comments on Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Tested
Looks like a phenomenal chip though, runs cool, reaches 3.7Ghz. Me likely :D
forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=84158
Nice to see positive reviews about AMD chips.
Get the 940, it's cheap. I could buy 3 of them.