Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition review - Introduction

Introduction

Time is creeping on, we just entered 2011, and slowly but steadily we are getting closer to some interesting new processor developments, the new year will bring a lot of good stuff. A race has started in-between AMD and Intel bringing processors to the market with embedded GPUs but until then, AMD is still polishing and beefing up their Phenom II line.

Today two new products are launched by AMD, and here at Guru3D we'll review the fastest one. Let's have a peek first as to what AMD has got prepped for you with the right pricetag. Its the year 2011 and while the global financial crisis slowly seems to settle down AMD, of course, is going for value products. Here's what's announced today:

Processors & Pricing

• 3.6GHz Phenom II X4 975 ‘Black Edition’ ~$195
• 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 840 ~$102

It's that Phenom II X4 975 ‘Black Edition’ we are interested in, and as such we'll cover that one. The all new 975 processor is still based on the now all too familiar Deneb die, yes this will be AMD's fastest quad-core processor to date. Tagged with a price of only 195 USD this puppy is clocked at a staggering 3.6GHz and is an unlocked Black Edition processor. And the BEs always offer tremendous overclock potential, BE processors definitely have our preference in terms of tweaking flexibility.

So that's what we will be dealing with today. We'll first browse through the processor and its respective architecture, after which we'll fire off the benchmark test suite at them to see how they perform value for money wise.

Well, nuff said, let's start up the review... next page please.