AMD PHENOM II 4X Z965 AM3 BLACK ED Phenom II X4, 3.4 GHz (HDZ965FBGMBOX) Retail Processor

During the winter of 2010, I am building a large polycrystalline solar panel array and needed a computer to control the system.  For its reliability and ability to adjust multiplier speed, I choose the AMD Phenom II 4x 965 processor.  The ASUS m4a785 M has given me the ability to offer four video streams to the internet of my solar array with the AMD 965 down clocked to just 2,000 Mhz!  The solar powered computer has been sitting outside in ambient temperatures that exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and has not crashed yet.  If you are interested in building your own rock solid web broadcasting machine then you owe it to yourself to check out the rest of this review.

How does the AMD x4 965 compare to the AMD 1090T x6 Black Edition processor?

How far will with the unlocked cpu multiplier allow you to overclock the AMD Phenom II 4x 965?

Read On To Find Out!

Installing Your New AMD 965 x4 Phenom II Processor
Before you can experience the power of a Socket AM3 processor you will have to install it.  Have no fear though because the whole operation is really quite easy compared to installing Windows Vista on a computer.  First, unplug the power supply and put an anti-static wrist band on your arm.  Now, open the AM3 socket, the little square piece of plastic on the motherboard, by lifting the metal handle.  Place the CPU on the grid and gently press down while closing the AM3 socket by pushing the handle down again.  Now apply a liberal amount of Artic Silver 5 heat sink compound on the entire processor surface and spread it across the CPU die using a piece of cellophane or thin plastic. 

Operating Temperatures
With the outside temperature at 32 degrees Centigrade, under a full processing load and at 3.655 Ghz, the 965 hit a peak temperature of 59 degrees Centigrade on the stock AMD cpu cooler.

Normally, the AMD 965 x4 will maintain an average temperature of just 43 degrees Centigrade during normal Windows XP Professional operation at 3.4 Ghz.  You can reduce this down to 35 degrees Centigrade by reducing the clock multiplier to 10x for an operating frequency of 2.0Ghz .  Today, I use this quad core processor at this clock speed since the computer is outside in a small control room that I built for it.  The computer has been operating for 45 days without a reboot and has not overheated yet either.  Since the AMD 965 does use an unlocked processor it will also go as high as 21x on a stock for even greater flexibility.   

Benchmarks And Performance Discussion
For my benchmark setup, I used the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO Motherboard, a Corsair CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 XMS3 8 GB PC3-12800 Core i5 Memory Kit, Transcend VSeries 32Gb SSD SATA drive as the boot sector and a set of four Samsung 500 GB HD502HJ SATA II Hard Drives in a RAID 0 array with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition as the operating system.  The computer has been my choice for a series of AMD processor articles lately because it gives me a one stop option for quickly testing new products as they come in.  While I am now using the AMD 965 in a ASUS m4a785 motherboard, it has been able to return similar results to those seen below in the new configuration.

Super Pi V1.1 Results
Super Pi is an application that extrapolates the specified digits of PI into a text file. Using just one cpu core at time, the program has proven to be a very reliable stress test for many AMD and Intel products.  Processors with large on-die cache sizes and high memory bus speeds tend to do better in this benchmark.   A low processing time in this benchmark will directly translate to faster performance of web browsers so it is very important to pick a computer chip that excels in this test.

Here are the results of three runs at 1,000,000 digits of PI with the AMD Phenom II x4 965 at Core Speed 3400 Mhz, Bus Speed 200 Mhz,  DRAM Frequency 800 Mhz :
1)  20 seconds
2)  20 seconds
3)  20 seconds

Here are the results of three runs at 1,000,000 digits of PI with the AMD Phenom II x4 965 at Core Speed 4.127 Mhz, Bus Speed 200 Mhz,  Multiplier 20.5, DRAM Frequency 671 Mhz :
1)  17 seconds
2)  18 seconds
3)  17 seconds

The AMD Sempron 140 @ 3.51Ghz was only able to complete the Super Pi benchmark in 23 seconds so we can easily conclude that the hefty 6Mb of cache on the AMD x4 965 is helping out.  The AMD 1090T x6 Black Edition processor in the same ASUS AM3 motherboard,  3.915 Ghz reported a score of 18 seconds.

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta Results
POV -Ray stresses the floating point unit and memory bandwidth of the processor to render stunning 2D images. A new version of the freeware 3D animation utility has been released that offers SSE2 enhanced processing extensions along with multicore optimizations that will utilize all the available cores in your computer. As comparison, the AMD (ADA4000DAA5BN) Athlon 64 4000+, 2.4 GHz processor completed this test in 26 minutes 2 seconds at stock clock speed.

Using the benchmark.pov file at 512x384 NO AA, I ran the following traces :
4 minutes 26 seconds; Core Speed 3400 Mhz, Bus Speed 200 Mhz, DRAM Frequency 800 Mhz, multiplier 17.0
3 minutes 51 seconds; Core Speed 3913 Mhz, Bus Speed 200 Mhz with the multiplier increased to 19.5

In the same motherboard, I later installed an AMD 1090T x6 Black Edition processor and got these results :
3 minutes 24 seconds; Core Speed 3915 Mhz

A 27 second gain in performance by installing the six core AMD 1090T was not the boost that I expected.
Today, I have this AMD Phenom II x4 965 processor in the ASUS M4A785-M AM3 motherboard.  The motherboard uses DDR2 memory so I thought it would cause this processor to perform slower.  I was wrong.  The AMD 965 returned the nearly identical benchmark results in a DDR2 motherboard.

AMD Phenom II x4 965 Specifications
Manufacturer:  AMD
Model Number:  HDZ965FBK4DGI
Code Name:  Deneb
Product Name: AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition
Cpu Frequency:  3400Mhz
Physical Cpu Cores: 4
Inefficient Hyperthreading Cores:  0
CPU Multiplier:  unlocked clock multiplier
Level 1 Cache Size: 4 x 64Kb code cache, 4 x 64Kb data cache
Level 2 Cache Size:  4 x 512 Kb
Level 3 Cache Size:  6Mb
Manufacturing Die:  45 nm
64bit Operating System Support:  Yes
Memory Controller:  Integrated dual-channel, 144bit DDR2/DDR3 Memory Controller
Instruction Sets Supported:  MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, Advanced Bit Manipulation, AMD64 technology, Enhanced Virus Protection, Dynamic Acceleration technology, Virtualization Technology
Warranty:  3 years parts and labor limited

Summary
Without question, this is the fastest quad core processor offered by AMD in the Phenom II package.  You can expect solid performance from this in situations that require intensive single threaded processing while at the same time managing large volumes of file system data.  In other words, I recommend using this processor for any high end video gaming machine since it can use DDR3 memory to efficiently process incoming internet traffic and display smooth video with an NVIDIA or ATI SLI x16 graphics card.

The only real drawback for those of us seeking to buy this high performance AMD 965 Black Edition processor is that it was discontinued in January of 2010.  As a result, many online retailers do not offer this product for sale anymore.  You can still find it on Ebay.com so go check there first before committing to buy it elsewhere.

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