AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Review

1. Introduction2. The AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition3. Testing Methodology and Overclocking4. Pairing up with the Noctua NH D14 Cooler5. SiSoft Sandra6. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit7. AIDA 648. Cyberlink Espresso9. 3D Studio Max 201110. Clock for Clock 4.4ghz: SiSoft Sandra11. Clock for clock 4.4ghz: Cinebench R11.512. Clock for Clock 4.4ghz: Super Pi 1.5 Mod13. Clock for Clock 4.4ghz: PcMark Vantage14. Clock for Clock 4.4ghz: Cyberlink Espresso15. Closing Thoughts16. View All Pages

The new Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition should arrive in a box like the one above. We have an early engineering sample, so we just get the processor.

Above, the 980 Black Edition supplied in a green engineering sample container.

The X4 980 Black Edition looks pretty much identical to the X4 975 Black Edition, which isn't a surprise because architecturally, it is. The X4 980 Black Edition is clocked at 3.7ghz and features 128k of Level 1 cache, 2MB of Level 2 cache cache (512k per core) and 6MB of Level 3 cache. It is built on a 45nm manufacturing process and has an integrated dual channel memory controller with support up to DDR3-1333mhz. This is AMD’s official stance, however 1600mhz+ memory support is easily achieveable with motherboards currently on the market. All our testing today will be with Kingston DDR3 memory set at 1600mhz.

System validation is available over here.

AMD rate the processor voltage at 1.125v – 1.4 volts, however we will delve more into this later.

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