AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Review

Results Analysis

If we were dreading having to write loads about a clock-bump CPU in the intro to this review, we're really worried now. AMD's claims that its manufacturing revisions have made the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition more tolerant of high voltages were left in tatters after our awful overclocking experiences. Anything greater than a 1.5V vcore and the CPU became flakier than a certain Cadbury's chocolate bar.

Worse still for AMD, that 1.5V overvolt is exactly the same vcore as we used when overclocking the Phenom II X4 955 BE, the 965 BE's predecessor, when we pushed it to 3.88GHz. That we could only manage a very similar overclock (3.92GHz) with the new 965 BE indicates that if you want to get the most out of this CPU, you're going to need plenty of cooling.

After all, our Noctua NH-C12P is a great cooler for Socket AM3, and we've used an even blowier fan than Noctua's NF-P12 for our AMD test rig to ensure we're getting the most from them.

Power Consumption

So that leaves us with the 965 BE really being just a clock-bump CPU. While it's good news to see AMD ploughing ever further beyond the 3GHz barrier that has tripped it up for years (not many Athlon 64s got beyond 3GHz, and few Phenoms too) it's only due to a very high vid. While Intel seems to be pushing the vid of its CPUs down (1.2V is the typical value of our recent Core i7 samples) AMD is adding more voltage, and therefore more heat and more power consumption.

Just look at the Power Consumption graphs - the 965 BE is guilty of being among the hungriest CPUs we've tested recently. Go back to a slightly older review and the 965 BE would appear either last or second last compared to everything we've seen for the last year or two.

Performance and Value

While we can forgive high-performance components for high power consumption - the GeForce 8800 GTX, the Radeon HD 4870 X2, to name two such products - the 965 BE hasn't the speed to justify its power draw.

Compared to Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9650, the 965 BE doesn't fare too badly with both CPUs at stock speed - the Custom PC benchmarks gives the Q9650 an overall score of 1,288 and the 965 BE a score of 1,244, which is pretty close. However, the Q9650 is comfortably faster when both are overclocked, with a score of 1,646 to the 1,464 of the 965 BE. The same story is true of Cinebench and X3: Terran Conflict, where the lack of overclocking denies the 965 BE being comprehensively faster than the Q9650.

WPrime is faster on the 965 BE than the Q9650 though, as was Crysis so all's not lost for the 965 BE. However, Intel still has the upper hand with its Core i7 range, and we expect Lynnfield (which is largely based on the Nehalem architecture of Core i7) to be roughly as fast.

A saving grace of the 965 BE might be price - at £182.45 inc VAT, or $249 exc Tax, it's around £40 cheaper than the Q9650 which costs £238.56 inc VAT. Better yet, MSI has its 770-C45 board that costs just £63.24 inc VAT or its 790GX-G65 for £100.12 inc VAT both of which are great overclockers. However, the 3.2GHz 955 BE is now just £146 inc VAT and doesn't have a TDP of 140W, so won't rag the fan of your cooler so hard.

Conclusion

While the 965 BE is pretty quick, and certainly gives the once untouchable Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 a run for its money, we still wouldn't want to use it. A TDP of 140W is silly these days, and your cooler will let you know that every time you use your PC. We're also disappointed that we couldn't get the CPU beyond 4GHz, or a vcore of 1.5V, despite AMD's claims that the 965 BE would be more tolerant of high voltages.

With Lynnfield on the way, we wouldn't be buying a CPU at all at the moment, but if you've got a compatible motherboard and know you won't able to afford the new motherboard, memory, cooler and CPU that a Lynnfield upgrade neccesitates, we still wouldn't recommend this CPU. A 955 Black Edition is more than £30 cheaper, overclocks just as well and doesn't have a monstrously high TDP.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

Score Guide