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
Sonar 8 Audio Mixing Performance
In our only digital audio production test we take a multi-track recording and export it to a WAV file using Sonar 8. The benchmark isn't very well threaded and prefers two very fast cores to several slower ones:
As I mentioned before, this is the biggest issue with AMD's lineup. If you're running applications that can't use the extra cores, AMD's advantage typically disappears.
Gaming Performance
At the high end, AMD's Phenom II X6 and X4 lose to the similarly priced Lynnfields. In the middle the Athlon II X4 645 and Athlon II X3 450 do very well.
With the exception of the Phenom II X6 and X4 processors, AMD is generally competitive here. Intel maintains the performance advantage above $200. There's an unusual amount of variance in our tests here (particularly old vs. new AMD results). The variance appears to be caused by the platform shift as we moved all of our AMD testing to the same 890GX motherboard. The change in performance under Dawn of War II however doesn't really change the standings.
WoW performance is governed by two threads thus negating any core count advantage. AMD loses at the high end but is competitive around the $100 mark.
Starcraft 2 performance is something we're beginning to look at. Again we have a situation where a game doesn't use more than two cores. The Phenom IIs are slower than Lynnfield, while the multi-core Athlon IIs do well against their competitors. If you're building a fast Starcraft 2 box that doesn't have to do anything else, the dual-core CPUs do better here.
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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?