1. Introduction2. The AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition3. Testing Methodology and Overclocking4. Pairing up with the Noctua NH D14 Cooler5. Getting a Baseline - AMD Phenom 1055T and Intel Core i5 7606. Baseline - SiSoft Sandra7. Baseline - Cinebench R11.5 64 Bit8. Baseline - Video Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso9. Baseline - Rendering: 3D Studio Max 201110. 3.6ghz - Default Speeds11. 3.6ghz - SiSoft Sandra12. 3.6ghz - Cinebench R11.5 64 Bit13. 3.6ghz - Video Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso14. 3.6ghz - Rendering: 3D Studio Max 201115. 3.6ghz - PCMark Vantage16. 4.0ghz Bios Settings 17. 4.0ghz - SiSoft Sandra18. 4.0ghz - Cinebench R11.5 64 Bit19. 4.0ghz - Video Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso20. 4.0ghz - Rendering: 3D Studio Max 201121. 4.2ghz Bios Settings22. 4.2ghz - SiSoft Sandra23. 4.2ghz - Cinebench R11.5 64 Bit24. 4.2ghz - Video Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso25. 4.2ghz - Rendering: 3D Studio Max 201126. 4.3ghz Bios Settings27. 4.3ghz - SiSoft Sandra28. 4.3ghz - Cinebench R11.5 64 Bit29. 4.3ghz - Video Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso30. 4.3ghz - Rendering: 3D Studio Max 201131. Compared to Intel Core i5 655k32. Compared to Intel Core i5 760 @ 4.0ghz33. Compared to AMD 1055T @ 4.0ghz34. Closing Thoughts35. View All Pages

Almost two years ago, AMD began to push its successful Dragon Platform for desktop systems. The fastest chip in the line-up was the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Today, AMD releases the latest in a long line of Black Edition CPUs, in the shape of the quad core Phenom II X4 975. Today we will detail how to get the most from this chip with a step by step overclocking guide, which will push it to the limit.

We've been told that the 975 Black Edition will cost around the same as the six core AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor. That's a distinct disadvantage for the new chip. KitGuru really likes AMD's 6 core processors and the 1055T is a particular favourite. Even before we started testing, we had to wonder how any amount of overclocking would be able to make up for removing 2 cores while still operating in the same price space.

With an estimated retail price of $195 dollars does the X4 975 offer enough bang for the buck? It's a tough ask, and today we will find out if it succeeds.

No retail packaging for our early review samples, just the processor in a simple protected AMD branded green case. We wouldn't want the reference cooler anyway, because with this overclocking guide we need something considerably more substantial.

The X4 975 Black Edition looks identical to the previous Phenom II 970, which isn't a surprise, because architecturally, it is.

The X4 975 Black Edition is clocked at 3.6ghz and features 128kb of Level 1 cache, 2MB of Level 2 cache (512kb per core) and 6MB of Level 3 cache. It is built on a 45nm manufacturing process and has an integrated dual channel memory controller with support up to DDR3-1333mhz. This is AMD's official stance, however 1600mhz+ memory support is easily achieveable with motherboards currently on the market. All our testing today will be with Kingston DDR3 memory set at 1600mhz.

AMD rate the processor voltage at 1.125v – 1.4 volts, however we will delve more into this later.

System validation is available over here.

While hardly a great indication of detailed system performance, we always like to include the Windows Experience Index result, mainly just out of curiousity.

Our review today focuses on the overclocking capability of the AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition processor and as we progress further we will explain our settings, before we reach the core limitations.

There is much debate online as to ‘how to overclock the quad core AMD processor’ and while these processors can require a little hand holding at times, the basic methodology is straightforward. I actually find them extremely simple to overclock and they like voltage, as long as you don’t get out of control.

Voltage limitations are also a constant topic of conversation and if you google online, you will see many overclocking forums have pages and pages of argument and counter argument as to how far you should really push the silicon.

My own findings may of course differ from other enthusiast users but I can honestly say that I have yet to kill any modern day processor by pushing it too hard. Perhaps I have ‘the luck of the Irish’ when overclocking.

So let me state it clearly for anyone reading this. With air cooling, regardless of how hardcore it is, never force more than 1.575 volts through an AMD Phenom II X4 or X6 processor. If your cooling is modest, then aim much, much lower. The only air cooler I would use for this level of voltage is the Noctua NH D14. More on this cooler on the next page … but that is my own rule of thumb condensed into a paragraph.

Today we are going to review the processor with a multitude of settings and for each section I will detail the bios settings I used. This, in theory should mean that a quick perusal of settings should be easy for our readers, rather than scrolling down a single page with 5 or 6 sets of detailed bios configurations.

While many reviews will build up to an ‘overclocking’ page near the end of the review, as I said earlier, the point of this article is to publish an analysis of the 975 Black Edition in various configurations of overclocked states.

So how far did we manage to push the 975 Black Edition?

System Validation is available over here.

I managed to get 4.4ghz at 1.59 volts, however from my own experiences with AMD processors this could be rather fatal long term and while it would look great on paper, I am not recommending our readers to attempt this, even with the stunning Noctua NH D14 cooler. Sure. if you are trying to break records with LN2, go for it, but for 24/7 real world use at the heart of an enthusiast system, forget it.

AMD rate the maximum voltage for these processors as 1.4 volts, but this is a very safe rating to ensure that failure rate is not an issue from them. As with all overclocking ventures, I don’t want to be held responsible for any fried hardware. I recommend my own settings then show you those settings in action, but there is always a risk with overclocking any hardware, you are after all pushing it beyond manufacturer specification.

Getting the X4 975 Black Edition to 4.4ghz might not be that easy, but 4ghz, or higher proves little issue, as long as you have a good motherboard and decent cooling.

Much depends on your motherboard, choice of cooler, and level of expertise (patience?), but it really isn’t such a dark art.

Our review systems of choice are as follows. Special thanks to Intel, AMD and all the other companies involved for supplying the hardware. We have included the X6 1055T and Intel Core i5 760 as main competitors, as they all share a similar £140-150 inc vat price point. Intel Core i7 950 and AMD Phenom II X6 1100T are included to show potential performance gains when moving up to the next price bracket.

Main Review system:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB 1600Mhz Kit
Motherboard: MSI 890GXM-G65 (MS-7642)
Graphics Card: HIS HD6870 Turbo Edition
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower Grand 750W
Chassis: Antec Dark Fleet DF-85
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Drive: Intel 80GB SSD

Intel Review System 1:
Processor: Intel Core i5 760
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer 4GB 1600mhz
Motherboard: AsRock P55 Extreme4
Graphics Card: AMD HD6950
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower Grand 750W
Chassis: Antec Dark Fleet DF-85
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Drive: Kingston 128GB SSD

Intel Review System 2:
Processor: Intel Core i5 655k
Memory: Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600mhz
Motherboard: AsRock P55 Deluxe 3
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD6850
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower Grand 750W
Chassis: Antec Dark Fleet DF-85
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Drive: Kingston 128GB SSD

Software:
Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise Edition SP1 (fully updated)
FRAPS
PC Mark Vantage
SiSoft Sandra
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cyberlink Media Espresso V6
3D Studio Max 2011
Super Pi Mod 1.5

When settling on a high end air cooler that most people can afford, we really had no hesitation in shortlisting the Noctua NH D14 heatsink, which we affectionately have dubbed the “Austrian Sandwich”. This cooler has yet to be dethroned as the best heatsink on the market, and while some publications have been rather dismissive of this solution, we simply have yet to use a more formidable air cooler.

The only downside is the £70 asking price, but in this case it really is worth every penny. I can think of no better partner for an unlocked processor.

For our review today, we added an additional 14cm Noctua fan, settling on a 14cmx2 and 12cmx1 configuration – blowing air in tandem from right to left. This produces very little noise but creates massive levels of airflow, and even at 4.4ghz with 1.6 volts coursing through the processor, the heatsink remained cool to the touch. While the Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 has also received critical attacks due to its somewhat unusual appearance, it is one of the best airflow chassis on the market with 7 large (quiet) fans installed.

It is worth addressing the AMD temperature guidelines, because they state that a 62c thermal threshold should not be exceeded. We actually agree with them on this, and prefer to see the 6 core X6 processors hitting load at no more than 55c. AMD motherboards can be rather flaky when it comes to temperature readings so we placed a diode on our 1100T to measure temperatures at various speeds and voltages.

Room temperature was held at 25c with air conditioning.

The incredible Noctua NH D14 delivers the goods yet again, with a maximum temperature of 54c at 4.3ghz with 1.55 volts pumping through the processor. Interestingly we found this X4 975 Black Edition was a little hotter than the X6 1100T, even though it demanded slightly less voltage to get stable at the given settings.

Before we head into our result testing of the AMD X4 975  Black Edition we felt it was important to get baseline results from a couple of processors.

Firstly we selected the Phenom II X6 1055T – the bargain, value for money 6 core processor that has sold exceptionally well for AMD in 2010. In the past we showed you how to get a 900mhz overclock from this CPU with minimal effort, so it makes for a great value for money purchase, especially for people on a budget but who want multiple processing power for rendering and encoding. This CPU is selling right now for £150 inc vat, meaning it really is still one of the best bargains out there. This costs around the same price as the X4 975 Black Edition, but has two extra cores and runs 800mhz slower.

Secondly, we selected the Intel Core i5 760 processor, the replacement for the Core i5 750 of yesterday. This processor is priced at £145 in the UK right now and is Intel's direct Quad core competitor to the X4 975. It isn't an unlocked processor however, but 4ghz+ is easy enough with the right motherboard.

We also include some reference base results with the Core i5 655k, Intel's unlocked CPU which didn't prove to be a great seller. It ticks over at 3.2ghz and can achieve massive overclocks (just under 5ghz), and costs around £190 inc vat although it has been recently discontinued. This is a dual core design with hyperthreading (2 physical + 2 logical).

While we could use a variety of testing today, we settled on a total of five suites, to give a good cross section of overall processing power.

Test One:

SiSoftware Sandra is a great indication of potential performance levels, we are going to take results from the Arithmetic, Multimedia and Cryptography benchmarks. We particularly like the Crypography test as it is major part of computing. Certain processes can prove slower than others, depending on their algorithms. User passwords on your home PC are encrypted, as are user passwords on web servers. Past that, cryptography is used in other areas as well, such as with creating of unbreakable locks on files or assigning a hash to a particular file (like MD5).

In Sandra’s Cryptography test, the results are outputted as MB/s, higher being better. The higher the number, the faster the CPU processes through the respective algorithm.

Test Two:

Cinebench R11.5 64 bit is a particular favourite of ours, as it is a borderline ‘synthetic’ application. Certainly it is a scripted benchmark, however it is based on the fantastic CINEMA 4D rendering engine, which is used by many studios and production companies worldwide for 3D content creation. You might not know, but this software was used in the creation of movies such as Star Wars, Spider man and the Chronicles Of Narnia.

Test Three:

Video Encoding: Cyberlink Media Espresso 6. We love this program at Kitguru, not only is it a great indication of how fast a processor can handle video encoding, but it also now supports video card acceleration. This means you can see just how much time you are saving if you get your graphics card to support the processor. Today we are disabling the graphics card element of the encoding process, to focus completely on the AMD and Intel Solutions.

Test Four:

Rendering: 3D Studio Max 2011. This is another professional level software package that offers uses integrated 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing capabilities. It delivers differentiated experiences and specialized toolsets for game developers, visual effects artists, and graphic designers on the one hand, and architects, designers, engineers, and visualization specialists on the other. We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

Test Five:

PC Mark Vantage. This PC benchmark suite is designed for Windows and offers one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Its a fairly close match between the Core i5 760 and the AMD 1055T, the two extra physical AMD cores helping to make up for the greater Intel efficiency.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The extra physical cores really make a difference with the Cinema4D rendering engine as the 1055T pushes out way ahead of the 760, at reference speeds.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people. Graphics card acceleration is disabled, so we are solely weighing in processor performance.

The Intel architecture delivers much better results with the video encoding test.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

The Intel solution can't outperform the 1055T due to the extra physical cores.

Today we are using the MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard with the latest V1.7 bios released a short while ago. We have read some negative reports about this board in recent months, with some instability issues mentioned – however in our testing since it was released our board has been extremely well behaved and a fantastic overclocking product.

It isn’t a particularly high end board either, costing only £100 inc vat in the UK. We achieved no better overclocking results with the Asus Crosshair IV Formula board we have in our labs.

Performance settings for this series of results at reference speeds were kept to the bios defaults.

MSI literature for the board is as follows:
World Leading Motherboard and Graphics manufacturer, MSI, launches their brand new 890GXM-G65 Motherboard using the AMD 890GX chipset to fulfil the increasing demand for the perfect home theatre PC. In addition to tailoring to the latest AMD Phenom II processors, the 890GXM-G65 provides full support for the DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 Multimedia standards to significantly enhance High-Definition audio and video effects. Along with a wide variety of output interfaces, the 890GXM-G65 allows users to build a high quality HTPC combining both high performance and high stability

The 890GXM-G65 is not only a perfect HTPC motherboard, it also allows users to unlock the full potential of their CPU for maximum performance. By allowing users to unlock up to six cores the MSI 890GXM-G65 enhances performance and saves energy. unlocking addition cores on the CPU has become the hot topic of PC users lately and this board with integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics redefines the first choice of a fully featured motherboard.

The 890GXM-G65 includes support for DirectX 10.1, ATI Hybrid Crossfire, ATI CrossfireX for installing two high performance ATI graphics cards, USB3.0 and native SATA-III (6Gbps) for maximum data transfer speeds.

Key Features

• AMD 890GX chipset based
• Supports USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0
• OC Genie Lite: Easy Overclocking Technology
• Superb Stability: Military Class Components
• Fully-equipped Digital Output Connectors: HDMI & DVI
• Lossless 24bit/192kHz HD Audio
• Highly-efficienct HeatPipe Thermal Design

Specifications

• Support for AMD Athlon II & Phenom II Processors
• HyperTransport 3.0 supporting speed up to 5200MT/s
• AMD 890GX and SB850 Chipset
• Integrated ATI Radeon HD4290 GPU
• 4x unbuffered DIMM DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600*/1800*/2133* (OC) DRAM, 16GB Max
• 2x PCI Express x16 slot (8x 8x in multi-GPU configuration)
• 1x PCI Express x1 slot
• 1x PCI slot, support 3.3V/ 5V PCI bus Interface
• One IDE port Supports Ultra DMA 66/100/133 mode
• 5x SATA III (6Gbps) support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 mode
• 1x eSATA
• Flexible 8-channel HD audio with jack sensing
• Gigabit LAN

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

As expected, even with an 800mhz clock differential, the 4 cores of the X4 975 Black Edition can't keep up with either the Core i5 760 or the 6 core 1055T.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

As we already would expect, four AMD cores can't really compete with six AMD Cores, even with a 800mhz boost. Intels four core solution does very well considering the clock speed difference.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people. Graphics card acceleration is disabled, so we are solely weighing in processor performance.

While the 975 BE is two cores down when compared to the 1055T, this particular benchmark favours not only core efficiency, but frequency.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

The X4 975 Black Edition completes the task in 3 minutes and 34 seconds, 5 seconds slower than the 1055T. The increased core frequency helps a little to counterbalance the fact it is working with two less cores.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

Please be aware that these systems are using different motherboards, memory and hard drives, so some variances will occur.

This is the first stage of our overclocking phase. Reaching 3.8ghz was easy enough and didn't require any voltage tweaks at all, however to get 4ghz stable, a little core voltage increase is required.

To achieve 4ghz stable we simply increased the CPU ratio to x20. We also disable AMD Cool n' Quiet. The joys of owning a Black Edition mean you aren't tied into increasing FSB speed to raise the CPU clocks.

The CPU voltage needed increased to 1.45v for complete stability. Different motherboards might need a few other voltage tweaks for complete stability, but this MSI board is really solid, especially with the FSB at the reference settings.

System validation is available over here.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Even with a 1.2ghz clock differential in favour of the 4 core 975 BE, it still fails to outperform the 6 cores of the 1055T.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

With a 1.2ghz clock improvement, four cores still aren't as high performing as six as the results above show.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people. Graphics card acceleration is disabled, so we are solely weighing in processor performance.

Intel's architecture is superior with this video encoding engine as can be seen by the results.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

With the four cores running at 4ghz, they manage to equal the performance of the reference clocked 1055T.

Pushing to 4.2ghz requires extra voltage and a high quality cooling system.

To get to 4.2ghz we increase the multiplier to 21x. Simple enough.

To get the clocks stable at 4.2ghz we have to increase the voltage to 1.531v, this will vary slightly depending on the processor and motherboard. Please don't try this with a reference Intel cooler!

System validation is available over here.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

With a 1.4ghz clock differential the 975 Black Edition has almost caught up with the 1055T.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

At 4.2ghz, the 975 Black Edition still hasn't managed to catch the six core 1055T.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people. Graphics card acceleration is disabled, so we are solely weighing in processor performance.

At 4.2ghz, the time is reduced to 15 minutes and 47 seconds, still a little slower than the 760 at reference clocks.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

The 975 Black Edition manages to sneak out in front at 4.2ghz.

To reach 4.3ghz, more core voltage is needed and only the best air coolers such as the Thermaltake Frio or the Noctua NH D14 should be used now.

4.3ghz is configured by increasing the multiplier to 21.5x.

A final setting – 1.551 voltage is required for complete stability.

System Validation is available over here.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

At 4.3ghz the performance finally passes the 1055T at 2.8ghz. The two missing cores have made this a difficult task, regardless of the increased core speed.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

If ever a test showed the benefits of extra cores, the Cinema4D benchmark is the one to use. At 4.3ghz the 975 Black Edition finally matches the default 2.8ghz clocked 1055T.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people. Graphics card acceleration is disabled, so we are solely weighing in processor performance.

At this core clock the 975 Black Edition is the highest performing solution on test so far. We will compare the Core i5 760 later on a clock for clock basis and it will obviously retake the lead.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.

The gulf widens with the overclocked settings, scoring a final time of 3 minutes and 19 seconds.

The Intel 655k was a dual core processor with hyperthreading enabled. It didn't prove to be a huge seller for Intel, although with high end air cooling it was possible to get it stable at 4.8ghz. The 655k can still be bought in the UK for £190 inc vat although it is being discontinued. We felt it would be interesting to compare the AMD X4 975 Black Edition against this processor at reference speeds.

We also decided to give both processors a run through with Super Pi Mod 1.5 with an 8 million calculation.

So far we have shown the overclocking capabilities and performance levels of the 975 Black Edition. On this page we will compare the 975BE against the Intel Core i5 760, with both overclocked to 4ghz.

We also decided to give both processors a run through with Super Pi Mod 1.5 with an 8 million calculation.

On this last page we are comparing the AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition against the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, both at 4ghz.

Not even closely matched at the same clocks.

Creating a full, 34-page overclocking guide for this processor is a clear indication that we have tried each and every tweak, crank and shove to get the maximum possible performance from the technology. Unfortunately, it's the underlying technology that is now being asked to do too much.

At its stock speed of 3.6Ghz, AMD's new Black Edition does a reasonable job of standing up to Intel's Core i5 760 in tests like Cinebench 11.5 – but the Intel chip is purring along at just 2.8Ghz.  So, even with an 800MHz disadvantage on core speed, Intel is still almost level. As you would expect, AMD's 1055T is already 20% ahead at stock speed.

But this is a Black Edition processor. Born to fight in the overclocking space. Using KitGuru's skill and experience, we managed to add 1Ghz to the AMD's core speed.

It's a clear indication of how the world has moved on since the original 955 Black Edition came to the market back in 2009. That chip shipped at 3.2Ghz and (with a bump to 1.45v on the core), most enthusiasts could add on around 700Mhz to give themselves a 3.9Ghz processor.

But that was then and this is now. We're living in the post Phenom II X6 world where AMD is shipping a full 6 cores at similar pricing to this quad core 975 processor.

After loads of work and endless tweaking of all available settings, what did KitGuru manage to achieve?

AMD's Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition can be overclocked by a full 1GHz and, at that point, it achieves exactly the same performance in Cinebench 11.5 as the 1055T processor does at stock speeds.

With only a smattering of knowledge, you could opt for Intel's Core i5 760 processor and nudge it to 4GHz. At that point, the Intel chip is breezing past the AMD 975 by more than 15%.

Intel has just launched the brand new, second generation Core processors as well – so the gap would now be bigger.

However, the coup de grace is actually served up by AMD's entry level 6 core processor.

Overclock the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T to 4Ghz and you get Cinebench 11.5 results that are almost 45% faster than AMD's new quad core.

KitGuru says: There is just one factor here which AMD can (and probably will) affect. That is price. AMD's quad core processor could find a place in the market if AMD can get the price much closer to £99. It's a mental milestone which might appeal to overclockers. We have no idea if AMD is able to sell this kind of processor into the channel at $110, but that's the kind of change that would be needed to help it find a place in the market. For now, AMD's Phenom II X6 1055T remains a significantly stronger choice.

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