AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 stepping

AMD HAS SPUN a new bit of silicon on the Phenom II X4 965 BE processor. The C3 stepping is a bit more refined and squeezes the gigahertz out of the CPU more efficiently. AMD has been able to bring down the TDP by a reasonable amount putting it on par with Intel’s Core 2 Quad offerings.

The thing is, while the 965BE is good and overclocks better... it’s really the other more “value” offerings from AMD that will benefit with this revision of the silicon. Then, maybe, just maybe, we’ll get 45W power efficient quad-cores.

 Here's a list of reviews from around the web, in no particular order:

Guru of 3D

Pure OC

Revioo.fr

Benchmark Reviews

Extreme Overclocking

Hot Hardware

FiringSquad

Tech Report

Bit Tech

Neoseeker

Lost Circuits

Overclockers Club

Tom’s Hardware

A few days ago Hardware.fr, a french site, published an interesting article on failure rates on several key components including GPUs, PSUs, RAM, HDDs and motherboards.

Hexus grabbed some piccies of a Clarkdale CPU+GPU combo being overclocked all the way up to 4.7GHz on air. While AMD is still sticking GPUs on the chipset, Intel will put them in the same package as the CPU. This will stir things up a bit.

IT Reviews managed to secure a sample of the Archos 10 netbook. Save for a horrible battery life you might find some UK etailers flogging it on the cheap.

Legit Reviews tests Kingston’s high-end 256GB SSDNow V+ unit. Using a Samsung controller, the drive delivers massive performance yet lacks the TRIM feature that’ll save you a headache down the road.

Cheap and efficient, the Athlon II X2 240e is on the bench at Techware Labs. The little Athlon is suited best for HTPC systems with its lower power consumption and reasonable performance. For just $60, it might be worth dropping in a mini-ITX mobo…

Lynnfield’s launch spurred memory vendors into tweaking and launching “Lynnfield-optimized” memory. Bit Tech took upon itself to pick up as many of these kits as possible and see if they’re up to the hype.

Bjorn 3D has plugged in an Ultra X4 1050W power supply to their test rig. Its fully modular design eliminates cable clutter, and while not as good as other top name brands, it does stand on its own two feet.

Android has unlocked the imagination of hardware vendors and spurred numerous new devices such as the Dell 3i, a device that – curiously – was launched first in China. Thinner than the iPhone and bearing some GUI resemblance, the 3i might just make it good in the US.

Hardware Bistro breaks in the Titan Skalli CPU cooler. This Heatpipe Direct Contact cooler uses two heatpipes in a slim heatsink combined with the cooling power of a 10cm PWM fan. It’s affordable and very lightweight. µ