AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When testing processors with Crysis or ET:QW, we drop the resolution to 800x600, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible.  However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.

The new Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition was marginally faster than the lower-clocked AMD-built processors, but our game tests were all about Intel. Even the Lynnfield-based Core i5-750 finished ahead of AMD's fastest quad-core, nevermind Sandy Bridge or Gulftown.