AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Reviews

@ 2009/08/13
Quote:
Without a doubt the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition is faster than anything you can get that fits into an LGA-775 socket at a remotely similar price point. AMD has done its duty well there, the 965 is clearly a better option than the Q9550 or Q9650 for that matter.

As a gaming CPU, it's actually competitive with the i7s. If you exclude the FarCry 2 results, which I hardly believe are representative of most games, the Phenom II X4 965 is easily just as good of a gaming CPU as an i7 in today's titles. Now once you start throwing in background tasks and look at future titles being more threaded then the picture becomes a little more muddy. Overall application performance is very good from the 965's perspective. It's only in a handful of 3D or well threaded apps where we see the i7 really pull away. The 965 BE is competitive, just not faster.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3619&p=1

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=762&type=expert
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-965,2389.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...ii-x4-965.html
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...43&Item id=27
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Ha...views/pii_965/
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii_965/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom...r-review-test/


Quote:
My sense is that AMD has taken a bit of a risk here by introducing a CPU with a 140W TDP at this point in time. They may take flak from some quarters for doing so, and given the fact that Intel's competing product has a 95W TDP, it's not hard to see why. Still, our testing showed that the Phenom II X4 965 isn't a total embarrassment in the peak power draw department, and it actually managed to beat out the Core 2 Quad Q9550 in our key power efficiency metrics thanks to strong performance and low system-level power draw at idle. The X4 965 is also a little faster overall than the Q9550, particularly in floating-point heavy applications like video encoding and 3D rendering. Yes, you will want a relatively large cooler to keep the X4 965 quiet under load, but that's also true of any number of high-end CPUs from Intel and AMD at present.
Comment from jmke @ 2009/08/13
Comment from wutske @ 2009/08/13