AMD Phenom II X4 970 Quad Core Processor Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
748 words · ~3 min read
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this is the phenom2 x4 970 and i will
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tell you what is special about it it is a quad core processor at 3.5 gigahertz
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with eight megs of cash that makes it AMD's fastest quad core in terms of
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sheer frequency ever and we are going to open it up it
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uses a true quad core design which is uh what mostly everyone is
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using these days and it fits in a standard am3 socket
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AMD's really done a phenomenal job actually it fits in an am2 plus socket
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too AMD's really done a phenomenal job of
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making sure that their customers are getting great backwards and forwards
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compatibility out of their new cpus their old motherboards and yeah kudos to
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AMD so this chip supports ddr2 as well as ddr3 that is an am3 or an am2 plus
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socket it is AMD vision black you can see the branding sticker is
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put on there a little bit after the fact so you should combine it with an hd 5000
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series graphics card as well as an 800 series chipset to get the best possible
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experience according to the AMD vision
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marketing campaign that AMD does here is a quick start guide as well as your
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warranty information we're not really going to go through that in any great detail so we'll have a look at the chip
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itself it comes with a phenom 2 sticker which you can put on your case hey look
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at that i haven't seen a sticker like that before look it slides into a little thing
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you just pull it out with your thumb and it doesn't go anywhere
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no that's kind of different and AMD's actually changed their uh their CPU
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clamshell a little bit too it uses a slightly different design now so we'll
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have a look at the chip itself there it is phenom 2
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you can see all the numbers on the top of the chip so there's uh
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940 pins on the bottom there that's an am3 compatible
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pin out and we'll have a look at the included thermal solution since this is their
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highest clocked quad core this is going to come with a fairly beefy cooler i can
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already see it has a copper well fairly beefy for a stock cooler i mean
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it's not going to really like compare to that thing but
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it'll be reasonably close well no it won't be reasonable never mind
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it'll run fine unless you're overclocking in which case you should
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probably get something better okay so this is the cooler that debuted with the
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original socket 939 dual core opterons i
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remember this one and back then it had an 80mm fan which was slightly cooler
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and more impressive but it still has uh this looks like a 60 millimeter fan and
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it's a slightly deeper one it's not a low profile one so you should get some
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pretty good airflow out of it it's got four heat pipes a copper base and
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aluminum fins and that's pretty much all there is to say about it like i said if
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you're running it stock this is going to run nice and cool nice and quiet for you
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but if you are overclocking you're probably going to want to throw something a little bit more impressive
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on your brand new black edition CPU oh yes black edition so this is a black
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edition chip that means it does come with a fully unlocked multiplier for
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as AMD puts it maximum control or
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for from my perspective lazy easy overclocking so that means you
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can tweak it as much as you possibly can without really knowing anything about
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overclocking which is great you just turn up the multiplier turn up the core
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voltage and boom you're done now something i want to investigate so
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you'll have to stay tuned for a future video is whether or not this quad core
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can be unlocked to a six core it depends on what kind of a manufacturing process
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AMD's using and i hope to update you in the future don't forget to subscribe to
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