AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Review

Testing

We use the Asus Crosshair IV Formula motherboard to test AMD CPUs, which is an excellent overclocker that's based on AMD's 890FX chipset. This is a more expensive motherboard than the Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H that we used for testing Intel LGA1156 CPUs, but both boards enabled us to get the maximum performance from the CPUs on test. Meanwhile, our LGA1366 test board is the awesome Asus P6TD Deluxe, which is also a full-size ATX board. Finally, we use Asus' P8P67 motherboard to test Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Test Setup

Software

Below is a list of the applications we've used for testing - most of them are available free for public consumption, although some of our benchmarks are based on popular professional software.

• Crysis v1.21
  
• X3: Terran Conflict rolling demo v1.2.0.0
  
• WPrime v2.00
  
• Media Benchmarks v2007.235
  
• Maxon Cinebench 11.5 (x64)

We've used Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, as this is the most flexible and reliable 64-bit OS for testing the applications above.

Test Hardware

• ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card (Catalyst 10.11 WHQL)
  
• 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard disk
  
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
  
• Asus P8P67 Intel LGA1155 motherboard
  
• Asus P6TD Deluxe Intel LGA1366 motherboard
  
• Asus Crosshair IV Formula AMD Socket AM3 motherboard
  
• Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H Intel LGA1156 motherboard
  
• 4/6GB (3 x 2GB) Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3 memory (CL9)
  
• Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ CPU cooler, except for LGA1155 systems where we use a Corsair H50 due to the incompatibility between the Fenrir and Asus P8P67 motherboard.