Review-Phenom II X4 980 Processor: AMD’s Fastest Quad Core CPU is Here!

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

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May 4, 2011

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Test Results

Blender 2.49b

Blender is an open-source 3D-modelling software. Performance is measured through the amount of time needed to render a 3D object. Lower figures represent better results.

There’s a small 4% performance difference between the Phenom II X4 980 BE and its immediate predecessor. However, both processors managed to reach the same, 4.1 GHz frequency when overclocked, which effectively eliminates that little gap between them.

Cinebench R11.5

Cinebench benchmark calculates hardware performance in rendering a 3D scene. The final results are measured in points. Higher points mean better performance.

The extra 100 MHz on the Phenom II X4 980 BE takes it ahead of the Phenom II X4 975 by around 3%. When overclocked, both processors are tied. Phenom II X6 1055T sits on top, which should come as no surprise since Cinebench rely very much on the amount of available treads. The two quad-core CPUS can’t quite compete with it, even when overclocked.

Excel 2010 – Montecarlo

Surely you are well familiar with this popular spreadsheet application from Microsoft. Here, we see how fast each processor could finish the “Monte Carlo Simulation Table” in Excel 2010. The final scores are measured in seconds. Smaller figures indicate better results.

The two additional cores on the Phenom II X6 1055T give it a slight advantage over the Phenom II X4 980 BE and Phenom II X4 975 BE. AMD’s fastest quad core CPU is left by 18%. Overclocking narrows the gap to 13%.

7-Zip

Another file compression software that we use as a benchmarking tool is the 7-Zip (version 9.20). This particular application is able to utilize all available threads, making it ideal to test the performance of multi-core processors. The same set of files as used in the Winzip test are also employed in this test. For our testing purposes, the file compression is carried out under three different scenarios: utilizing 1, 2, and four threads. Results are measured in the amount of time needed to finish the process. Lower figures are better.

The faster cores on the Phenom II X4 980BE and Phenom II X4 975 come in handy in applications that do not utilize too many processor threads (and most still don’t), as demonstrated by the three different scenarios of our 7-Zip benchmark. Phenom II X6 1055T lags behind because, individually, its cores are clocked at lower frequencies compared to the quad-core CPUs in our test.

FastStone Photo Resizer

FastStone PhotoResizer is an image converter/ resize software capable of applying image manipulations such as resizing, cropping, rotating, and others on multiple files through batch operation. For the purpose of this test, we convert a collection of TIFF images (66 files; 527 MB total size) to JPEG format (quality level: 90). Each picture is also resized to 600 pixels on the longest side. The entire process only utilizes one processor core (thread). Therefore, processors with high clockspeeds would have a slight advantage over slower CPUs. Results are measured in the amount of time needed to finish the resizing and converting process. Lower scores are better.