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
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
The 1075T comes close to its competitors in the 3dsmax test, while the Phenom II X4 970 definitely falls short.
The quad-core Athlon II X4 645 does much better than the dual-core i3 530 (and by extension the 540). The same holds true for the Athlon II X3 450 vs. the Pentium G6950.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance is AMD's weakest point. Even at 3.5GHz the Phenom II X4 970 can't keep up with a turboed Core i5 750. If you run a predominantly single threaded workload, Intel will typically offer you better performance than AMD.
Turn up the thread count however and the value proposition shifts to AMD. The Phenom II X6 1075T gives you more for your money in a heavily threaded app than the Core i7 860, and the Phenom II X4 970 is a smidge ahead of the i5 750. The Athlon II X4 645 and Athlon II X3 450 both do very well.
I've started running Cinebench 11.5 in preparation for an update to Bench, some of the initial results are below:
The default benchmark is heavily threaded. As a result the scores echo what we just saw.
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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?