AMD Phenom II X4 975 3.60GHz AM3 Processor

A Closer Look
As the chip itself is a small rather dull-looking nondescript block of aluminium with the best part of a thousand shiny pins on the bottom, much the same as every other AMD CPU from the past decade, so it looks like we’re going to don the virtual x-ray specs to perform a “Closer Look”.

As you probably already know, this core is based on the Deneb architecture; it features 4 cores (denoted by the X4) at a 3.6GHz stock clock speed. Each core features 64KB of L1, and 512KB of L2 per core, with a further 6MB of shared L3 cache.

Its memory controller supports DDR3 up to speeds of 1600MHz using the AM3 socket, but rather impressively it also retains full backwards compatibility with DDR2 at speeds of up to 1066MHz, as well as socket compatibility with AM2+ and even ye olde AM2. This is a major selling point in comparison to Intel and is a definite bonus for anyone looking to upgrade on a budget.

The TDP of this processor sits at a comfortable 125W which is quite impressive due to the core used and how the stock frequency that this CPU has. When you consider the first 940 X4 used the full 140 Watts to deliver just 3GHz, we’d like to congratulate AMD on this accomplishment.

This CPU also supports the standard features from this range of processors of which includes Cool & Quiet which enables the CPU to down-clock to 800MHz or 1600MHz dependant on load. This is a nice feature that reduces heat production and power use when the CPU is not running at full pelt.

The eagle-eyed (or just plain knowledgeable) among you will have noticed the pin count is 940. AMD prevents older processors from working with new sockets by omitting pin-holes, this means that the CPU can be backwards compatible, but the motherboard cannot, thus meaning that this CPU will work with many sockets but will NOT work with the upcoming AM4 based motherboards.