AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Review

[sudeshc]

Ahh why didnt they launched it few weeks ago. would have buyed it.

 

[Schip]

Hey Cangelini, I wonder if the extra .05 volts would have made a difference on stability at 3.9 ghz (I believe AMD says their suggested "max" voltage is 1.55V). Clearly it won't make a real difference performance wise, it just looks a little better. Any way, AMD just needs to keep their heads above water for a little while, keep up the decent/good value and do better on their next gen chips. Be realistic people. They don't have some chip up their sleeve to whip out when i5 is released. There was a reason the foundry company was started and it wasn't because AMD is sitting on a secret weapon. Cheers!

 

[Guest]

I am a biased AMD b1tch and will never buy intel...

I dont care how good intel get's i have been through thick and thin with
AMD ... the good times and the bad times and never had a bad day with an
AMD chip by my side.....

Years of gaming and fun and it's good to see AMD still slaps intel silly when it comes to multimedia.... I remember when they just brought 3Dnow!
to the table...

I can not see myself going to a LAN to kick ass in UT etc. and not do it on a AMD.... and they look after me by not forcing me to buy new mobo's and ram every single time they decide to make a better chip...

As long as my 4890 and my 955 can swing my 3D gaming past 40 odd fps at the higher settings I'm happy intel can go screw itself...

Viva la AMD viva... (you know it makes sense) O yes BTW screw BMW aswell Mercedes IS KING....


you see guys and girls..... Personal preferance is the wise mans choice in buying something....

Peace out!

 

[Guest]

Most people couldn't tell a difference in day to day use, people act like this isn't a viable contender to i7/i5. Pentium IV sucked ass for many reasons(especially that horrendous denormalization errata, worse than any AMD errata ever, by a wide margin), however, barring a serious day-to-day issue with denormalization, P4 was "good enough".

Now, if Core i7 was 10x faster per-core, then it might start being hard to justify getting AMD, but there is typically a neglible difference for most people's uses, unless you only do non-GPU accelerated video rendering all day long.

 

[luke904]

the 965 will overclock better than the 955

if it didnt (and its simply an overclocked 955) then why would they have waited this long to release it?

 

[ash9]

Hexus.net offers this these specs and price list- note the cache for i5's are 1/2 of the i7's at 4MB, if thats right- no hyper and a 4mb cache makes the cpu way over priced even at $149
Model
Cores/ Threads Clock (GHz) Turbo-boost Cache (MB) QPI (GT/s) Socket(LGA)
Price ($) Price (£)
Core i7-975 4/8 3.33 Yes 8 6.4 1366 970 591
Core i7-960 4/8 3.20 Yes 8 4.8 1366 545 332
Core i7-950 4/8 3.06 Yes 8 4.8 1366 545 332
Core i7-920 4/8 2.66 Yes 8 4.8 1366 275 168
Core i7-870 4/8 2.93 Yes 8 TBD 1156 545 332
Core i7-860 4/8 2.80 Yes 8 TBD 1156 275 168
Core i5-750 4/4 2.66 Yes 4 TBD 1156 192 117
Core i5-670* 2/4 3.46 Yes 4 n/a 1156 275 168
Core i5-661 2/4 3.33 Yes 4 n/a 1156 192 117
Core i5-660* 2/4 3.33 Yes 4 n/a 1156 192 117
Core i5-650* 2/4 3.20 Yes 4 n/a 1156 172 105
Core i3-540 2/4 3.06 No 4 n/a 1156 139 85
Core i3-530 2/4 2.93 No 4 n/a 1156 119 73

 

[Gixbit]

Well, It would've been nice if this review had displayed the difference between a 955BE overclock to 3.8ghz and a 965BE overclock to 3.8ghz. That way it's on fair grounds. After all, everyone is saying it and when I was looking at it, the first thing I thought is. "It's the same process with a bigger number and a higher stock speed."

Overall though, Points to AMD for trying. They need to stop dropping the ball and make a $1000 processor and kick intel in the face. Lol.

 

[ImaxAMD]

the 965 will overclock better than the 955

if it didnt (and its simply an overclocked 955) then why would they have waited this long to release it?

Your right, and it is true.

Bjorn3D have no problem with 4ghz+:

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1656&pageID=7429

Not sure why THG has a notoriously hard time with overclocking these but it probably has to do with not upping the voltage correctly.

Its not just the core voltage guys, there is a CPUNB (besides NB).

I am sure THG knows how to Google though, eh.

 

[jj463rd]

[citation][nom]schip[/nom]Hey Cangelini, I wonder if the extra .05 volts would have made a difference on stability at 3.9 ghz (I believe AMD says their suggested "max" voltage is 1.55V). Clearly it won't make a real difference performance wise, it just looks a little better. Any way, AMD just needs to keep their heads above water for a little while, keep up the decent/good value and do better on their next gen chips. Be realistic people. They don't have some chip up their sleeve to whip out when i5 is released. There was a reason the foundry company was started and it wasn't because AMD is sitting on a secret weapon. Cheers![/citation]
Yeah nothing new when i5 comes out however I've heard of a c3 revision of the Phenom series that's supposed to come out by the end of this year though.

 

[playerone]

Hey Cangelini, I wonder if the extra .05 volts would have made a difference on stability at 3.9 ghz (I believe AMD says their suggested "max" voltage is 1.55V). Clearly it won't make a real difference performance wise, it just looks a little better.

Sounds like you are not familiar with overclocking the Phenom.

There are a number of things on the chip that need voltage and that the BIOS allows you to control, its not just the Vcore and the control is there for a reason.

Voltage recommendations by AMD are with the stock HS in mind, though it doesn't really take much to push the 965 to 4.2ghz.

 

[playerone]

Also note; for what ever reason all Phenoms seem to run into a wall at 4.2-4ghz in all win64 OS even on LN. XP/Vista/7 all the same.

 

[izach]

AMD needs to get back to the drawing board and come up intel i7 killer. Unless it aims for the head it is not going any where.
this is the same situation intel was with Pentium 4, then it was concentrating on clock speeds and AMD was beating it on every corner with a superior architecture. But then intel went to work on its design & architecture and came out a winner not by higher clock speed but by the a better architecture.

 

[enayet_redeemer]

If the simulated Core i5 results would match with real Core i5 and it will release to sit in between Core2 Quad and Phenom II then AMD surely needs to find somehing new and more efficient to hold its posiiton in the market.

 

[littleleo]

Your simulated Core i5 tests are a joke, why space on it. Comparing a actual CPU you can get and one that has yet to be released is a waste of time. Remember the SST they built mock-ups and spent millions on it and did it fly? No. Just test whats real not what may be someday. When the i5 comes out then test it and lets see what it can do, but making up number based on your guessing of how it will preform and may cost is a waste of time and does us a disservice.

 

[Guest]

Yes, something is definitely holding back the AMD systems. If you look at the synthetic benchmarks comparing the P 965 at stock speed to the i7 920, the P is a tiny bit slower at floating point arithmetic, and slightly faster at integer performance. As i believe it won out in terms of instructions per second. So basically, they are neck and neck in terms of ability to turn through calculations (AMD has 28% clock speed advantage what do u expect).So why is Intel winning?

Its all about the cache and the memory bandwidth baby! The Intel chip is running at much fuller capacity, while the AMD chip is constantly 'waiting' for information. This is made even worse when u look at the architecture of the 2 chips, i am sure. Furthermore, the ability to run 2 threads on a single core is the finishing blow. By running 2 treads simultaneously, u only need to process each one at half speed, meaning u have twice as long to do it.

Let me give AMD and their engineers some advice, based on carefully studied figures. First 2 pieces of information that my conclusions are based on:

1) I heard rumors of a 2.8 GHz quad (L3 cache reduced/removed) with a 65 watt TDP.
2) The bump from 2mb L3 cache in Phenom 1, to 6mb L3 cache in phenom 2 only gave ~4% performance increase according to AMD engineers.
3) The increased cache resulted in a transistor increase in the range of ~60-75% (can't remember exact figure).

I now draw a conclusion:

The 2.8 GHz quad with reduced L3 Cache should (fingers crossed) have virtually the same performance, but with a 65 watt TDP, while being much cheaper to make.

I now make a suggestion:

Build a 6 or 8 core version of this CPU.

The power consumption/cost/performance should be (approximately) as follows

1) ~95 watts for 6 core, & ~130 watts for 8 core
2) 6 core chip cheaper then PII 940 (3.0 GHz quad), 8 core chip same as P2 955. (reduced L3 cache & clock speed help price)
3) Single threaded performance equivalent to PII 920 (2.8 GHz quad), multi thread performance ~30% faster for 6 core and ~55% faster for 8 core.

One final piece of the puzzle; new motherboard with better memory support. May i suggest Tri or Quad channel DDR3 1333?

Based on the above i would choose the 6 core chip as the clear winner. 95 watt TDP, 2.8 GHz, 6 cores and inexpensive. Only downside is reduced cache which will do virtually nothing to performance.

 

[inmytaxi]

With the regular q9550 performing as well the 965 with games at stock speeds, and having 33% oc headroom vs. 12%, AND costing just $169 if you're near a Microcenter (one in store only -- it's $219 at NewEgg, still cheaper), I'm still happy with my deal with the devil.

 

[aford10]

Kudos to AMD for getting back in the game. But they seem to still be a step behind intel as far as quality and choice is concerned.

AMD has good prices and great upgrade ability with consistent sockets. However, Intel has the edge with performance.

 

[ash9]

Beware of the benchmarks that give Intel chips and advantage. Its no way that a stripped down i5 (no hyperthreading, 2cores, 2 threads)can compete even against the Dual cores unless program code is optimized. the only advantage is the 8mb cache, and turbo.

 

[Guest]

Still AMD has long way to go to challenge the leader, the 9550 rocks

 

[xenon aniki]

Wish AMD solve their problem by creating new product line, dun just bump clock only. Intel and AMD must co-exist and balance or otherwise we will buy CPU at hefty price

 

[Guest]

Yeah you're saing that the best amd proc (oc 3,8) is as fast as a 920 (2,66 stock freq). This is ridiculous, you should compare an intel i7 975 at 3,8GHz and a PII 3,8GHz and you will see that the amd proc is as bad as always...

 

[Why_Me]

AMD sux0rs atm.

 

[hikaru_shindo]

i would like to see the amd 965 OC vs a intel 920 OC, the true be told then, it is known that Intel cpu are usually more stable then AMD cpu's when overclocked, also are better at overclocking.

 

[lofas]

I am glad to see that TH started to bench games at high graph settings. It was incredibly stupid to test ~200$ CPUs with low/medium graphics settings and ~150fps when ~100$ video cards can easily run most games at high/very settings and 50fps+. This review is helping me do decide which CPU I want to buy.

 

[Guest]

why do we need computer go faster, i think they are fast enough for what we are doing ,