AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 12:00 AM EDT

Although much of the scuttlebutt lately has revolved around AMD’s upcoming Llano and Bulldozer-based APUs, the company isn’t done pushing the envelope with their existing processor designs. In case you haven’t noticed, over the last few months AMD has continued to ramp up frequencies on their current bread-and-butter Phenom II processor line-up to the point where they’re now flirting with the 4GHz mark. We should also point out that AMD has done so with little disruption to their relatively low pricing structure; as a newer, faster processor is released in a given product family, it occupies the historic top spot while the existing products have simply been pushed down the stack to lower price points.

Maybe we’re being a bit optimistic, but today’s launch of the Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition marks the release of AMD’s highest clocked processor yet, technically speaking. While the six-core Phenom II X6 1100T can Turbo up to 3.7GHz on half of its cores under certain conditions, the new quad-core Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition’s default clock on all four of its cores is 3.7GHz...

AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review

Tags: AMD, CPU, processor, phenom II, AM3, Black Edition, 980

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com