AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Pro Reviews

AMD's newest flagship quad-core Phenom II, the 970 Black Edition, comes out swinging and performs on par with previous models. A jump from 3.4GHz to 3.5GHz may not seem like much, but when paired up with a decent motherboard, the 970's unlocked multiplier will help reach higher speeds without sacrifices in temperature, further increasing the value of this CPU. Priced at $179, the 970 BE comes in about $60 under the latest Phenom II X6 and $80 above the Phenom II X2 560 BE, both of which were also released today.

Finally we have the new overclocking king from AMD. The Phenom II X4 970 is the fastest stock clocked processor of the family at 3.5 GHz. While it does not feature a Turbo Mode like the X6 parts, it is so incredibly easy to overclock to 4 GHz and above, that anyone wanting to make an AMD based system and overclock the dickens out of it should not look anywhere else. I would be very curious to see where this chip ends up when the LN2 people get a hold of it.

AMD often has to balance value and upgradeability against raw performance when competing with Intel processors. The Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition takes those traditional AMD advantages and adds an impressive stock clockspeed of 3.5GHz. The result is competitive multi-threaded performance and no excuses. While high clocks and four cores will inevitably deliver plenty of parallelised punch, the Phenom II X4 970's ageing architecture is exposed by applications that rely on strong single-core performance. What's more, the 3.5GHz stock clockspeed doesn't leave much room for overclocking.

We didn’t see any considerable performance increase with the new Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition compared to the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. Therefore, if you looking for the fastest quad-core CPU from AMD, you can buy the Phenom II X4 965 and save some money. Unless, of course, you are into overclocking. The new Phenom II X4 970 is in a class of its own, and we were able to easily overclock it past 4.3 GHz. With more time and patience you will surely be able to achieve an even better result.The Core i5-750 was faster than the Phenom II X4 970 and Phenom II X4 965 in most programs, but it is more expensive.

Frankly anyone who knows what's what in the tech world knows the story with Intel and AMDs desktop CPUs at the moment. AMD's chips can generally compete at a given price point at stock speeds but fall way behind when any of the overclocking sauce is applied as Intels processors tend to have bags of performance in reserve. Unfortunately the story isn't any different here.

Our benchmarks show that the fastest quad-core chip that AMD has ever produced, Phenom II X4 970 BE, makes a little sense if your usual workloads aren't massively parallel, insofar as they can't take great advantage of more than four cores.

Costs more than previous models but doesn't deliver a proportionate performance boost

As for performance, Phenom II 965 BE and Intel's Core i5 750 were neck to neck. AMD's new X4 970 BE wins the same battle but just by a fraction of a hair. Its biggest flaw is still the much higher power consumption under load compared to Intel's Core i5 750. In our benchmarks it is either very tied to i5 750, or wins by a small or barely noticeable margin, depending on the benchmark. Intel still has the edge in single threaded applications, but it's losing ground in the gaming segment, ending just slightly faster overall. Nevertheless, AMD managed to put a lot of pressure on Intel with a price that is $10 lower price than that of the i5 750. Not much, but that could turn out just to be enough to sway you over to the green side, if you're happy with the stock performance and settings Phenom II X4 970 BE offers. Enthusiasts and gamers still have a much bigger headroom to experiment with overclocking and performance, if opting for Intel's Core i5 750 or newer i5 760. If you were to choose the new Phenom II X4 970 BE, you'd make no mistakes. It's a great refresh for the Phenom II X4 range, and as said before, it just offers you a bit more for the same price.

AMD’s new high-end quad-core CPU fares well against its slightly pricier competition, even if it isn’t anywhere close to competing with Intel’s best.