Intel Core i7-870 vs AMD Phenom II X4 965

Core i7-870 vs Phenom II X4 965 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-870 performs better than the Phenom II X4 965. Despite this, the Phenom II X4 965 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores but the Core i7-870 has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Phenom II X4 965 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-870.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i7-870 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.