AMD had to go with a higher thermal envelope when it launched the latest flagship Phenom II X4 965 earlier this year. The model became the first 45nm processor from AMD with a TDP rating of 140W, which is in no way a good thing. Shortly after the launch we learned that AMD was working on a more efficient stepping and this is has now been launched with some unexpected goodies bundled.
The lower thermal envelope aside, now down to 125W TDP, AMD has updated the new C3 stepping of Phenom II with hardware-level support for Enhanced Halt State C1E and official support for four DDR3-1333 modules.
In summary, AMD has made three great changes since the older C2 stepping that is used by all Deneb-based Phenom II processors.
The new processor model looks to overclock better too, especially at stock voltage, while the power consumption is kept low without affecting performance.
After dropping Phenom II prices you can now get the flagship for less than 200€, you should keep an eye out a CPU with an "M" at the end of the serial number (the older C2 series has an "I"), indicating the latest C3 stepping.
Below are some tests of the new C3-stepped Phenom II X4 965 processor:
- Firingsquad - Guru3D - TechReport -
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