Hardware AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 Review

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/11/04/amd-phenom-ii-x4-965-be-c3-review/1

AMD updates its Deneb core on its fastest Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, and claims the C3 can overclock more, yield faster DDR3 memory and has even fixed the performance bug with its sleep states. Does it make a difference? We put the claims to the test.

 

The pages 6 and 7 have a grave mistake; the graphs are telling higher is better, the 920 is far behind the AMD, and the text reds that Intel wins. ????????????

It's good that I live in a littoral town; from all the seen performance on behalf of AMD I had to take a firm grasp on an anchor to not get blown away.

 

Also you've missed off the smiley which tells us whether to bother reading it or not

 

No the graphs are correct, they do say.. lower is better

 

True; now I can see that lower is better.
Well, there are two possibilities: or there was a glitch somewhere or AMD sabotaged the graphs.
The last would in line with their marketing of the new 5000 cards (shooting competition at Nvidia).

 

Will the 955 be receiving a new stepping too? I still don't feel that the extra £20 or so is worth the few extra MHz. Tho if the 955 doesn't get the new stepping the 965 certainly looks the better buy

 

The I750 seems to wins in all benches from the AMD quad core in the same price range.

The better choice would be to build a P55 upgrade for the same money but you get higher performance:
Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 € 83,93
Intel Core i5 750 € 158,51
OCZ Gold Low Voltage OCZ3G1333LV4GK € 82,-
Total: € 324,44

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition € 156,50
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P € 101,-
Gold Low Voltage OCZ3G1333LV4GK € 82,-
Total: € 339,50

Seems AMD is useful if you are on a tight budget and want a good quad core processor, for example the x4 810 (118 euro)

AMD Phenom II X4 810 € 118,95
Asus M4A785TD-V EVO € 77,-
OCZ Gold Low Voltage OCZ3G1333LV4GK € 82,-
Total: € 277,95

Fact is, that the AMD 965 can't compete with the same priced Intel I750

 

I honestly don't know. We were only told and given the 965 right now.

Your comparison is flawed considering you've put the CHEAPEST P55 board against a high priced 790FX. What about 785G?

The X4 810 is meh. I'd buy a Phenom II X2 550 if I wanted cheap. MHz before cores. If you need cores, you should get used to spending more money for a decent product, or find a second hand LGA775 chip.

 

Funny you should say that, because I've been wondering why you put the Athlon in the cheap system and not a 550. Could you build something around a 550 with decent RAM and maybe a 5 series ATI that would play everything and do most everyday tasks?

I've been lurking here for months and with all the reading I've done, it really does seem like it's either cheap Phenom, or go all out and get a 920. Anything in the middle just seems too expensive given how little extra it is for i7.

This article, seems to confirm that viewpoint. Shame, coz I was really hoping for something exciting from AMD with this revision.

 

Richard Swinburne is The Oracle for hardware.

 

You can buy a i5 and save some 100GBP compared to a 920.
Is that not enough for you??

 

Not really, no. What's £100 when I can get a 550, cheap motherboard and 4gig for £200? That should do everything I need and be fairly overclockable.

i5 is £120 more and what have I gained? Yeah, it's quicker and it overclockers better. But by how much in real every day usage. Benches are one thing, but what would i5 do for me that the Phenom couldn't?

i7 on the other hand offers the possibility of being the next Q6600 and offers me 2gig more RAM, more memory bandwidth, and hyperthreading. When the gap is only £100, I see no point in i5.

When I read Bindi's post the other day about "wait for the new stepping, that's all I'm allowed to say", I was hoping this article might offer me something else to consider, but in a way it's simplified things. It seems go cheap, or go expensive, but don't bother fluffing about in the middle.

Maybe that's just me though?

 

any word if C3 is going to be released for the 720 and 550?

 

Bit-tech have repeatedly said they haven't been told anything else by AMD.

I'm not saying this is gospel (clearly that would be ridiculous), but might be worth a look....

Clicky

 

Theres a few articles, I think it was [h]ard who most recent done a cpu bottleneck labs. I wasn't really interested in the i5/i7 since I still have life in my AM2+ but the 810 performed meh at stock but overclocked seemed to get a nice performance boost. I have to say tho that this was in gaming which is mainly what I use my rig for, but due to 3d modeling and me spending most of my waking hours on a pc cause of uni, Im starting to think of that upgrade. Also, christmas and my bday is round the cornor =p Seems tho that AMD is let down by current boards and as we all know, AM2+ boards generally sucked for HTT overclocking especially the one in my sig.

doesn't seem unrealistic to me tbh. If cores fail or demand remains high enough there is a good chance some of the c3's might filter down.

 

I hope you understand I wasn't allowed to elaborate, but still wanted you to read this review to add it to your decision

 

Of course, totally. I've worked with NDAs before and I know how it is. If you were dead set on going AM3 and wanted that chip, it's definitely worth making sure you get the C3. However, that doesn't really help me specifically!

 

Tom's must have a better chip, they got an extra 200MHz over C2

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/phenom-x4-965,review-31722-6.html

 

Whats the impact of running on of these in a DDR2 board? Is there a great performance loss? Seems a nice cheap chip to upgrade my original phenom. I assume these still run in AM2+ boards? Moving to another setup involves expensive SLI mobo, don't really want to bother if the impact is only something like 5% in real usage terms.

 

Thats not the point, I could throw in the Asus evo (77 euro) and then the I750 would still outperform the 965. Besides that the board of choice is not HIGH priced nor is it the Cheapest, its one of the cheap ones. Or else I would have chosen the MSI 790FX-GD70 or the Asus Crosshair III Formula. I just put in comparable boards in features and price range.

I was talking about quad core comparison. There are no lower priced Intel quad cores then the I750 for the 1156 socket. Otherwise I would have chosen a Q8200, which is both cheaper and faster then the X4 810:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 € 107,49
MSI X48C Platinum € 90,-
OCZ Platinum Dual Channel OCZ2P10004GK € 61,50
Total :€ 258,99