May 04 2011

AMD Phenom II X4 980 BE Thoughts

Published by at 4:03 pm under Technology

I’ve been reading some of the reviews published over the last 24 hours for the new AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition chip and have been amazed by how average the chip is.

One would think that AMD would release something impressive now, but it seems like they’re just trying to add another chip to the X4 stable, which is looking pretty full at the moment.

The biggest surprise came when I read Anandtech’s review of the new X4 980 chip. Even when you overclock the X4 980 to 4.2GHz, the Intel i5 2400 beats it when doing x264 encoding and the Intel is only running at 3.1GHz. Sure, the numbers are almost the same, but if I were to ramp up the chip to 4GHz, I would be awfully disappointed to see it tied or slightly below the i5 2400.

AMD’s X4 980 just doesn’t seem to offer a whole lot of value.

I think one of Anandtech’s readers has it right when it comes to AMD:

Bulldozer needs to be OUT NOW. AMD makes great products, but they are late to the party.

I’m surprised that more data about Bulldozer hasn’t been leaked. Early numbers are often questionable due to their source, but I’ve found almost nothing regarding Bulldozer. It reminds me of how movie studios don’t usually give screenings of the worst of their movies to movie columnists. I’m certain AMD will come around eventually, as the release date approaches. However, I’m skeptical about AMD’s Bulldozer coming anywhere near to where Intel is with their Sandy Bridge line of processors.

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