Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition review

Final Words & conclusion

AMD always manages to impress with products that offers great value for money. The processor we've tested today does not change that fact, despite it being another (of many) smaller speed bump refreshes.

The Phenom II X4 975 BE processor falls in the top segment of AMD's Quad Core processors. This Black Edition CPU is once again unlocked, and allows for much easier and convenient overclocking. But its baseline performance is already pretty darn nice. See, the processor is clocked at 3.6 GHz and that does make a difference compared to a year ago where 3.0 GHz was the norm for AMD's latest and greatest. If you are more of a gamer rather then a movie transcoding aficionado, I'd recommend this four core processor over AMDs six-core products. A good thing is that despite the high clock base clock frequency the TDP remains acceptable (but not low). We did notice an increase in power consumption though and compared to what's coming from Intel, the TDP levels where AMD is operating seems a little out of balance. Especially once you start to overclock and add CPU voltage, the power consumption increases dramatically.

Core for core this processor simply offers a little more bite thanks to the higher 3.6 GHz clock frequency on all cores, especially in games that like more per-core performance over multi-core performance that will become apparent. As always for the money you get a lot of compute performance alright, the Phenom II X4 975 BE is priced at 195 USD, which again is a MSRP and thus prices in stores within weeks will be lower.

We are reaching a turning point in the processor arena though, now more than ever we feel changes are needed. We'll be very interested to see AMD's next generation APU processors, a lot is happening right now in the processor industry for both AMD and Intel's Sandy Bridge. This year and the years to come CPUs will be merged with low-end GPUs onto one chip, hopefully offering you even more value for money and better power consumption. For the next generation we do hope to see some sort of hyper-threading for AMD's processors and an improved, preferably triple or quad channel memory controller. Think outside the box with new features, it's the only way for AMD to get ahead of Intel.

At suggested retail price of 195 USD AMD gives you a processor that clocks in at 3.6 GHz, the processor itself is mighty fine in a now mainstream to lower level enthusiast segment. The Intel Sandy bridge

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