Overclocking
3.8GHz in CPUz and Everest.
We dislike including overclocking results in our reviews because the results are subject to too many variables. Depending on the system’s individual components variances from processor to processor, an individual’s results may vary greatly from what we achieve with our review samples.
In the case of the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, we’re told that thanks to GLOBALFOUNDRIES maturing 45nm process, recent spins of the silicon are yielding chips capable of higher clock speeds than previous Phenom IIs. The 965 BE comes from those spins. In our testing, the chip booted at 4GHz, the “magic number” most overclockers aim for. Unfortunately, no matter what we did we could not achieve Prime95 stability at this speed. Backing things down a notch, 3.8GHz was easily attained and proved to be rock solid. We feel that with more time, based on the success we saw with overclocking the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, a daily usable 4Ghz overclock could be achieved.
We hit 3.8GHz on the 965 Black Edition with a 16x multiplier and 240 fsb at a 1.5v vCore and 1.8v vDIMM. Our CPU Arithmetic scores jumped to 54.38 Dhrystone GIPS and 43.51 Whetstone GFlops with the Memory Bandwidth floating point score increasing to 13.13 GB/s and integer score increasing to 13.15 GB/s. Not shabby for a 400mhz increase.
Conclusion
So where does that put the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition? In some cases, the Core i7 920 offers vastly more performance than it. The Core i7’s memory scores are around 40 percent higher than what the Phenom II pushes. That said, when it comes to gaming, video editing and encoding, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition offers much better value for the money because the Intel chip costs almost 15 percent more but yields performance increases in the low single digits; in some cases it is surpassed by the Phenom II altogether.
In many ways, the processors are like engines. The Core i7 is a big V8 compared to the high revving Phenom II four-banger. Muscle car versus hot hatch. They’re both fast, but the more expensive muscle car has some extra torque. That’s great if you’re pulling stumps, but unnecessary in your day-to-day trip to the grocery.
The Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition is fast and offers amazing value for the money. When it goes on sale today, the value will be compounded through special offers from retailers like Newegg, NCIX, Tiger Direct, ZipZoomFly, and MWAVE. When paired with a new motherboard, buyers will be able to save up to $40 or more (depending on the board selected) off the package price. Additional savings can be found when the package is paired with Corsair memory and Radeon GPUs, both of which will be offered at a discount.
It’s no secret that the AM3 platform is cheaper to build than Core i7, where the lowest end X58 motherboard prices cost as much as enthusiast-grade 790GX boards. When we consider how much performance the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition offers, it’s hard to justify spending the extra money for what only equates to a small gain in real world performance. The law of diminishing returns plays out fully in this case with the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition coming out the victor.
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