AMD's Fall Refresh: New Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs Balance Price and Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 21, 2010 2:52 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
- Athlon II
SYSMark 2007 Performance
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.
Let's go down the matchups shall we? The Phenom II X4 970 BE is competitive with the Core i5 750. Intel manages a 5.9% performance advantage in this comparison, but as I mentioned earlier the two chips will trade blows across much of our benchmark suite.
The Phenom II X6 1075T doesn't have a direct competitor but here it does worse than the cheaper Core i5 750. SYSMark is mostly a test of good dual-core performance and as a result Intel's turbo does more for performance here than AMD's 2-extra cores. It's a valid scenario to keep in mind as the number of applications that can stress all 6 cores are limited. Although when you're running one, there's generally no substitute for more cores.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the Phenom II X2 560 will easily lose to the Core i3 530 as the graph shows above. The same is true for the Athlon II X4 645. The chip gives you four cores at a very competitive price, but in a test that primarily stresses two cores the 645 doesn't get a chance to run.
The Athlon II X3 450 vs. Pentium G6950 matchup begins in Intel's favor, however this is the one and only time in our review that you'll see this happen.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Our Photoshop benchmark has traditionally favored Intel's architectures, which is definitely visible when you look at the Phenom II X6 1075T and Phenom II X4 970 BE above. The Athlon II X4 645 does slightly better than the Core i3 530 (effectively on-par with the 540), while the Athlon II X3 450 does noticeably better than the Pentium G6950. You can also see why I'm not really interested in the dual-core parts. They perform well, but that third core does come in handy for very little added cost.
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Madmanden - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
OMG YOURRRR SO INSITEFULLL!!!11111Learn to spell, moron.
MrPerlishells - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
I just bought the 95W version of the 1055T and it took a few months for it to be available. I put it in my ECS A780GM-A Black Edition Motherboard and it works for awhile then the screen goes blank.Going to have to get a new motherboard. So much for backward compatibility with AM2+ socket.
Bennyto - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
I have seen a few desktops form OEMs featuring an AMD Phenom II X6 1035T.Is this an OEM only CPU ? Could you include it in your performance charts? Thanks
biggbigg - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link
The 970BE looks interesting especially if it has headroom for more OC.coronaJet - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I think its astonishing, that the new Athlons X2 and X3 have lower power consumption than the old ones, even if they work at a higher frequency.How is that possible? Is that a new stepping or better voltage magagement ?
Hrel - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Looking at these charts. The Core i5 750 consistently beats the X4 970 and they're priced to compete against each other. Not only does Intel win more, but they win in all the areas that really matter to me; not to mention the power consumption advantage.Secondly, where AMD actually does very well, encoding video, that advantage is negated by the fact that regardless of how good the CPU is a encoding and rendering video doing those things on the CPU is almost entirely obsolete. I know I do all that stuff using my Nvidia GPU and it's exponentially faster.
In other words, AMD can't win anywhere at a similar price compared to intel. The ONLY reason I can see buying an AMD CPU and that price point right now is if the CPU is all your changing and you already have an AMD Motherboard. Unfortunetly for AMD if you're building a whole new system Intel is the way to go and every price point with decent profit margins.
loadwick - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Ivy Bridge is meant to be still on track for 2H 2011. This just seems crazy. Intel are not going to release a whole new generation in Sandy Bridge and then replace it within 6 months!??I guess they might just release a few 22nm parts like they did with 32nm but even that seems so unlikely right now. I mean we won't even have high-end Sand Bridge parts out yet and we will have the replacement for Sand Bridge at our door step!
Anyone know what is really going on?
alexb1 - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link
I am quite confused as to WHY Athlon II X3-450 with higher speed is actually cooler and more efficient than X3-440? Also, the same between X4-645 and X4-635?!I thought they're all the same core, no?
If these are more efficient, are they ideal for HTPC stored in a cabinet? using Antec Fusion Case?