The AMD Phenom II X4 980 BE was a desktop processor with 4 cores, launched in May 2011. It is part of the Phenom II X4 lineup, using the Deneb architecture with Socket AM3. Phenom II X4 980 BE has 6 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.7 GHz. AMD is making the Phenom II X4 980 BE on a 45 nm production node using 758 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Phenom II X4 980 BE, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 125 W, the Phenom II X4 980 BE consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. AMD's processor supports DDR3 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 1333 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the computer, Phenom II X4 980 BE uses a PCI-Express Gen 2 connection. Although the processor doesn't come with integrated graphics, certain motherboards with compatible chipsets can provide this capability.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Phenom II X4 980 BE, which greatly improves virtual machine performance.