AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition review

AMD recently unveiled its new Bobcat processor architecture – but that won’t be available to buy until next year. Until then, the company is left tinkering with its existing desktop line-up.

Hence, the Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition (BE). Ostensibly it’s a new quad-core flagship, but it’s basically identical to existing Phenom II X4 955 and 965 BE chips; same Deneb core, same 6MB L3 cache, same 45nm fabrication process, same 125W TDP. All that’s new is a stock speed of 3.5GHz, up a little from the 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz offered by the older models. There’s also a 3.6GHz version in the works, to be dubbed the X4 975.

Since the X4 970 is effectively a slightly faster X4 965, real-world performance is very similar. Still, that’s no embarrassment. Back when we reviewed the X4 965 it scored 2.02 in our application benchmarks running at stock speed with 2GB of DDR3-1066 RAM. This month, a stock-speed X4 970 scored 2.08. That’s a strong score, matching Intel’s Core i7-950 overall.

You’re not limited to stock speeds, though. Black Edition processors are sold multiplier-unlocked, for effortless overclocking. Running with a stock cooler, we found the original X4 955 BE was stable at speeds up to 3.7GHz, yielding a benchmark score of 2.17. The X4 970 managed to hit 3.8GHz, nudging that score up to 2.20.

These are great figures, especially for the price. Intel’s overclockable CPUs – the Core i5-655K and i7-875K – can’t match this for bang-per-buck, and with a custom cooler it may well be possible to eke even better performance out of the Phenom II X4 970.

What’s more, it's rumoured that OEM X4 970 BE chips will actually be six-core units with two cores disabled. With the right motherboard, and a bit of luck, you might be able to reactivate those cores.

But there's absolutely no guarantee that that will work, and even if it does only specialist workloads will benefit from the extra cores. In the meantime, the old Phenom II X4 955 BE is still on sale, for £30 less than the X4 970. So, tempting as the X4 970 BE is, if you're not the gambling sort (and can’t wait for Bobcat) we suggest you stick with the older, cheaper model.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith