Introduction

First of all, I would like to thank AMD for providing the tested Phenom II X4 970 BE processor sample, MSI for providing the 890FXA-GD70 motherboard and Links for providing the rest of the test setup.

Big day today for AMD. After few months of keeping a low profile, AMD is refreshing its whole processor retail offer from top to bottom. While introducing new and faster models with increased clock, AMD is keeping its top price bars, lowering the prices of existing models and introducing new, faster ones in their place, like the Phenom II X4 970 BE tested today.

Here we take a look at the fastest processor AMD ever shipped to the retail market: Quad-Core Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition, clocked to sky high 3.50 GHz and priced against Intel's very popular Core i5 750 model.

Packaging and Contents

We received our test sample in tray package, but the retail version packaging comes with AMD certified cooler, manual and three year warranty.

Phenom II X4 970 BE

To avoid any confusion or false enthusiasm some facts about new Phenom II X4 970 BE processor it must be pointed out at the very start, that these models are not based on any kind of Thuban derivate CPU core. It's the same old native quad core Deneb, which AMD has been using for quite a while now for every other Phenom II X4/X3/X2 processor. With that being said, it becomes clear that Phenom II X4 970 BE unfortunately is nothing more than a small speed bump over Phenom II X4 965 BE. No extra features, no hidden cores to unlock, just a small increase in speed by 100 MHz.

That makes Phenom II X4 970 BE the fastest binned processor AMD ever sold, and gives it a nice round number of 3.50 GHz for the same price Phenom II X4 965 had yesterday - sounds nice, even if you don't get any new features or hidden abilities. To keep it interesting, Phenom II X4 970 is based on the C3 revision of AMD's Deneb core, with some extra tweaking to power management, resulting in an operational voltage around 1.365 V and TDP of 125 W.



We will just mention the highlights of the Deneb processor, since it has been out in its current form for quite a while now. No need to go into details about something that has been said over and over again in the past year or so. Deneb's die measures 258 mm² in size and houses four CPU cores, with each having 128 KB L1 cache, 512 KB L2 cache memory, and all of them sharing a large pool of 6 MB L3 cache memory.

The integrated memory controller supports 1333 MHz DDR3 or 1066 MHz DDR2 type of memory, making these processors compatible with new AM3 or older AM2+ sockets, provided you have the needed BIOS update for your motherboard, making these processors a great choice for quick and easy upgrade.

Since Phenom II X4 970 has a TDP of up to 125W, you can put it in almost every AM2+/AM3 motherboard, without the need for an enthusiast-grade motherboard supporting 140W TDP. Of course, when overclocking, these processors' power consumption can skyrocket, but more on that later.

As for features and technologies support, the most significant must be AMD's Cool'n'Quiet technology, making these processors less power hungry while in idle or light load, changing all available cores to slower clock and lower voltages. Like other Phenom II models, X4 970 BE operates in four different states, with the lowest one being just 800 MHz and voltage of just under 1.0V. When under heavy load all cores are set to maximum frequency, in this case that would be 3.50 GHz and operational voltage of around ~1.365V. This enables Phenom II X4 970 BE to keep an efficient idle power consumption, and to keep power consumption and heat under load reasonable.

"Black Edition" suffix in the processor's name of course means the clock multiplier is upwards unlocked and can be freely decreased for underclocking or increased for easy overclocking without the trouble of finding the right HyperTransport of DRAM ratios. Other important features that Phenom II X4 970 supports can be read from the CPU-Z screenshot.

Test Systems

Below you can see the entire list of programs used to test our processors. Most of the tests make good use of multithreading, but just like real-life situations, there are some tests that prefer higher clock frequencies over number of cores or size of L2/L3 cache buffer. Since Windows 7 64-bit is used from now on as base for processor benchmarks, some of benchmarks are used in 64-bit versions as well.