# Phenom II X4 970 BE 3.50 GHz



## Omega (Sep 20, 2010)

Although frequency wars between AMD and Intel are long gone, this could be the day for the history books at AMD, as they let loose their fastest clocked retail processor. Based on the well known Deneb quad core, Phenom II X4 970 BE is clocked at 3.50 GHz and its goal is to refresh the upper end of AMD's offerings, replacing older X4 965 BE model but keeping the same price point and adding more pressure to Intel's Core i5 Series. 

*Show full review*


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## (FIH) The Don (Sep 21, 2010)

meh....but why AMD :shadedshu

but good review


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## wolf (Sep 21, 2010)

good that it displaces old models from their pricepoints, but 3.6ghz would have been better to see.


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## (FIH) The Don (Sep 21, 2010)

if they really wanted something nice then 4ghz, from 3.4 to 3.5 is just M-E-H


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## Kitkat (Sep 21, 2010)

bleh .. should have been 975 @ 125.  Do you guys have a 95w 955 yet?? i was looking forward to that too and i think it would have been great too bad its like... 4 months late tho. I hope u review that good review tho thanx



(FIH) The Don said:


> if they really wanted something nice then 4ghz, from 3.4 to 3.5 is just M-E-H



yeah should have started out at 3.8 or so, but its a good treat for those JUST buying or those who always buy at the end of a GEN and i know ppl like that. I dont see much more from this, but obviously not worth the upgrade. This should have been like to OEM only or vendors only i duno. oddball chip


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## Wyverex (Sep 21, 2010)

What I'd like to see is a bump in Northbridge speed, as it's been reported that it increases performance in many cases, especially in applications that are not optimized for many cores.
Had this CPU been 3.5 GHz CPU freq / 2.2 GHz Northbridge freq, it would've been an ever better CPU performance-wise and it would've been more competitive with Intel's offerings.

This way, I'll have to agree with "meh"


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## MrMilli (Sep 21, 2010)

Comparing to the i5 750 seems a bit useless to me since that CPU has been replaced by the i5 760.


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## afw (Sep 21, 2010)

Good review  .... 

(I can hold on to my C2Q system a liitle longer I guess  )


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## hat (Sep 21, 2010)

Looks like the 6-core 1055t is lagging behind... wtf?


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## brandonwh64 (Sep 21, 2010)

IMO this CPU isnt worth it. A 6-core would be around the same price range with better OCing ability. This release of this older CPU was kinda a waist and should have focused more of bulldozer


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## Mindweaver (Sep 21, 2010)

Not bad, but i would spend the extra cash and get a 1055T... I want bulldozer now please!... hehehe

Edit: Or get a 1075T Black and Great Review!


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## Omega (Sep 21, 2010)

MrMilli said:


> Comparing to the i5 750 seems a bit useless to me since that CPU has been replaced by the i5 760.



Don't have the i5 760 at hand, sorry


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## Major_A (Sep 21, 2010)

Have you looked at LAMEXP?  It's GUI audio encoder that is core aware.  If you have 2 cores it will use 2 cores.  If you have 12 threads it will use 12 threads.  You can also specify to use only one core/thread if you want to test CPUs.

http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#lamexp


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## newtekie1 (Sep 21, 2010)

Good review, and the 760's performance isn't that much different than the 750, so it isn't a big deal that it isn't included.


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## demonkevy666 (Sep 21, 2010)

970 BE can't be 258 mm²,  because it's a thuban chip with disabled cores
it should be 346 mm² 
aslo should have included Nb overclock as E0 do better on NB then C2 & C3 chips.


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## claylomax (Sep 21, 2010)

demonkevy666 said:


> 970 BE can't be 258 mm²,  because it's a thuban chip with disabled cores
> it should be 346 mm²
> aslo should have included Nb overclock as E0 do better on NB then C2 & C3 chips.



What?


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## cadaveca (Sep 21, 2010)

demonkevy666 said:


> 970 BE can't be 258 mm²,  because it's a thuban chip with disabled cores
> it should be 346 mm²
> aslo should have included Nb overclock as E0 do better on NB then C2 & C3 chips.



I guess you didn't read the review...cpu-z shows this is a C3 chip. Makes your request of NB clocking un-necessary.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 21, 2010)

cadaveca said:


> I guess you didn't read the review...cpu-z shows this is a C3 chip. Makes your request of NB clocking un-necessary.



Why read when there are all those fancy colored pictures about.

Wait, the pictures tell you this information too...


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 21, 2010)

Nice review Omega...

Actually a nice chip too..just seems a little late to be out


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## Poisonsnak (Sep 21, 2010)

Great review, pretty much slots right in where you would expect it to.

Too bad they didn't stick with their old numbering scheme (ends in 0 = AM2+ no DDR3 e.g. 920, 940, ends in 5 = AM3 DDR3 e.g. 945, 965) but I guess they already broke it with the 1090T anyway.


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## alexsubri (Sep 22, 2010)

glad to see my 965 was a great investment


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## xtremesv (Sep 22, 2010)

Then I have a Phenom X4 975 BE (undervolt a little bit btw) 

I'm very happy with it


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## WarEagleAU (Sep 22, 2010)

Awesome review and a nice speed bump for AMD to offer. I cant wait to see more Hexacores come out personally.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 22, 2010)

1.47 volts for a 3.9ghz wth


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## crazyeyesreaper (Sep 22, 2010)

yea that last jump always takes volt 3.8 - 1.425 4ghz = 1.525 volt jump is crazy on PII when it comes to eeking out that last bit of performance


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## Omega (Sep 22, 2010)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> 1.47 volts for a 3.9ghz wth



bios setting was actually ~1.425 V
either cpu-z reads it wrong or motherboard overvlots like crazy


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## crazyeyesreaper (Sep 22, 2010)

if 1.425 thats just .25v more then stock voltage so you managed to get 100mhz more then my 965be with .25 less volts i need 1.45 bios to get 3900 1.525 to get 4000 so the chips not bad i suspect better cooling this MIGHT be slightly easier to get to 4ghz since there probably slightly better binned


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## Omega (Sep 22, 2010)

stock voltage for 970 BE is 1.365 V


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## crazyeyesreaper (Sep 22, 2010)

wow??? damn 965 C3 is 1.4v stock so thats damn good... v wise


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## Anarchy0110 (Sep 22, 2010)

I know this sounds really noob. But it's kinda good to see a new revision of Quad-Core Black Edition CPU from AMD with some decent advantage over the old 965. I'm not a serious overclocker even though this CPU is really easy for OC. High stock CPU speed always catches my attention along with some critical CPU techs.
And hey  Price range to the i5 750 ??? 200+ bucks ???


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## MrMilli (Sep 22, 2010)

Omega said:


> Don't have the i5 760 at hand, sorry



I still think it's worth mentioning that in your conclusion even though you don't have a review sample. Also the i7 920 has been replaced by the i7 950.

I'll quote from a XBit review:
_Comparing the Core i5-750 with the new model, we can also note that the latter has more aggressive Turbo Boost technology. The Core i5-750 could increase its frequency multiplier by 4 under low loads, reaching a clock rate of 3.2 GHz whereas the Core i5-760 can increase it by 5 and reach a clock rate of 3.46 GHz._

While the performance difference would be small, it still would be bigger than the difference between the P2 965 vs 970.


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## Omega (Sep 22, 2010)

I agree. 
But we work with whatever samples we have on our hands, and to draw assumptions about i5 760 or any other model not in charts would be "guessing", since I don't have the data to backup my claims. 

It's left to readers to draw conclusions from the data we have.


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## [H]@RD5TUFF (Sep 22, 2010)

Not sure I really see the point of this given it sits in the price range of the 6 core processors, the only way I see the point in this is, if it's OEM, or if they sell it like the intel K series, and sell it without a heatsink, and drop the price about 30-40 dollars, then you would have something.


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## Mad Russian (Feb 10, 2014)

I don't know why they were only able to get 3.9 ghz out of it, its effortless to get 4.0-4.2 ghz without any voltage modifications or extraordinary cooling, would've helped with the oc'd results I think, they were increasing the multiplier when they should have been decreasing it and increasing the fsb instead.


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