AMD Updates Phenom II X4 Line-up with 980 Black Edition

On the performance side of things, Intel is winning the war against AMD in the current-gen, but if there were such a a competition to see which company could wring out as many speedbumps as possible from a single architecture, AMD would hands-down be the winner. Just when you think there couldn’t possibly be another… there it is, smacking you right in the face. The latest release? The Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition, which becomes the fastest quad-core AMD has offered to date.

Of course, I don’t mean to take jabs at AMD for its love of speedbumps, but when we all know that Bulldozer is right around the corner, it’s impossible… yes, impossible, to get excited over yet another speedbump. But for those who have been in the market for a new AMD CPU, there is a new option, and price drops to boot. We didn’t have time to take a look at the X4 980 (partly because we’re revising our CPU test suite), but we did want to talk a little bit about AMD’s current line-up.

The Phenom X4 980 Black Edition is a 3.70GHz part, featuring the same 2+6MB cache configuration we’ve come to expect, and also the same 125W thermal package. Priced at $185, it directly competes with Intel’s quad-core Core i5-2400, at 3.10GHz (Turbo to 3.40GHz), which currently sells $190.

In addition to the X4 980 BE launching, AMD has also dropped the price of its highest-priced part, the Phenom II X6 1100T, to $205. Given that Intel offers a mere quad-core at the same price, AMD’s part looks quite attractive (of course it gets more complicated than that, but on paper, AMD’s raw performance could be superb).

AMD’s latest addition does well to give consumers even more bang for their buck in the under $200 price-range, but I’m sure I’m not alone in drooling over the prospect of not seeing another speedbump for a while. Bring on Bulldozer!