AMD's Six-Core Phenom II X6 1090T & 1055T Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 27, 2010 12:26 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
Final Words
Today's conclusion is no different than what we've been saying about AMD's CPU lineup for several months now. If you're running applications that are well threaded and you're looking to improve performance in them, AMD generally offers you better performance for the same money as Intel. It all boils down to AMD selling you more cores than Intel at the same price point.
Applications like video encoding and offline 3D rendering show the real strengths of the Phenom II X6. And thanks to Turbo Core, you don't give up any performance in less threaded applications compared to a Phenom II X4. The 1090T can easily trump the Core i7 860 and the 1055T can do even better against the Core i5 750.
You start running into problems when you look at lightly threaded applications or mixed workloads that aren't always stressing all six cores. In these situations Intel's quad-core Lynnfield processors (Core i5 700 series and Core i7 800 series) are better buys. They give you better performance in these light or mixed workload scenarios, not to mention lower overall power consumption.
The better way to look at it is to ask yourself what sort of machine you're building. If you're building a task specific box that will mostly run heavily threaded applications, AMD will sell you nearly a billion transistors for under $300 and you can't go wrong. If it's a more general purpose machine that you're assembling, Lynnfield seems like a better option.
168 Comments
View All Comments
Lolimaster - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Other reviews that are worth to see.www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/04/27/amd-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-black-edition/4
www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=24332&page=8
Seems that only anand put Thubies as so so cpu.
Calin - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
From Bit-tech review:Conclusion
Despite being an astonishing £600 cheaper than the exorbitantly-priced Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, the X6 1090T BE still isn’t a very good buy
sciwizam - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
TigerDirect seems to have $50 rebate on the 1055T.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...
If Bing Cashback is applicable, there's another 12% off.
sciwizam - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Correction: Bing Cashback site says 8-10% for TigerDirect.Roland00 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
There are two ways you can get cashback with Tiger direct1) If you look under cashback stores you get a lower cashback.
2) If you use the search bar and type in a key term you will get a different cashback, with TD the key term is "Tigerdirect" with this trick you will get 12.3% cashback
Roland00 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Tigerdirect now has a $50 dollar mail in rebate on the 1090T BE, making the total 249 After Rebatehttp://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...
If you do bing cashback and actually search for tigerdirect you get 12.3% bing cash back.
$299.99-$36.89 (12.3% Bing Cash Back)-$50.00 (Mail in Rebate)=$213.10 after rebates and bing cash back
max347 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Usually AT is my go to hw reviews, but I have to say the overclocking section doesnt even look like any effort was put into it. Its a BE part, and you dont review how well it tweaks? Other reviews on the net have this at 4ghz+, and do all the charts with the oc and non oc included.I think most people who by the BE part will not keep the stock cooler. I use a TRUE cu, though I realize mainstream might be something a little less. At least throw a zalman 9xxx on there and see what it can do with that. Benched at 4ghz, the 1090T is competitive right up to the 980x (stock), which I think gives people a little more info on how high they can "reach" with this cpu.
I am in no way an AMD fanboy, but the $300 price tag for this performance seems like a leap for AMD. It has always been in my mind price/performance rather than work/clock cycle or the like.
Anyway, Thanks for the review!
pjconoso - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
In addition to the price, keeping the processor in the same socket is another plus to this processor.ViRGE - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Are those other reviews using a 32bit OS or a 64bit OS? The last time I checked, the Phenom/Athlon II series was still poorly overclocking in 64bit mode. If it's still happening then any overclocking results would vary wildly depending on the OS used.yankeeDDL - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I understand (and substantially agree with) the comments and conclusions regarding how the 6-cores Phenom compares against 2 and 4 core CPUs from Intel.I wonder though if these benchmarks are capturing the real benefits of 6 cores.
In my 'daily' use I have several programs running in background: virus-scan, instant messaging, music players, email clients, browsers (that regularly update RSS feeds) and sometimes also torrent clients. These all consume some CPU cycles, obviously.
With all these running in background, I wonder if the difference between a 2-core and a 6-core CPU will be more pronounced.
In other words: does it make sense to compare two multi-core CPU by running a single application at the time (albeit, possibly, a multi-threaded one)?