AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 2, 2011 10:42 PM EST
General Performance: SYSMark 2007
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. SYSMark 2007 ends up being more of a dual-core benchmark as the applications/workload show minimal use of more than two threads.
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.
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silverblue - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link
Some programs don't work well with non-power-of-2 architectures either, which would harm performance of the X3 and X6 processors (Windows Media Encoder 9), or even worse, cripple things completely (DivX or XviD on VirtualDub uses just one of an X3's cores, so you need to set the affinity to two cores). I suppose logically, overstressing a hyperthreaded CPU would mean that the its execution units are fully utilised and, as such, logical cores won't actually make any difference, so it would be in these situations where the X6 could perhaps close the gap a little. ReplyShadowmaster625 - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
It also gives them an opportunity to remove millions of wasted cpu cycles. Replykrumme - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
Man this is some boring news. I would prefer to get some more inside or backgroud info from AMD, Intel or Arm country, even if it takes years compared to this. But i guess this is better business :) Replygreenguy - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
I keep checking here looking for the inevitable Llano review, but it's not here yet. How long do we have to wait? ReplyAction_Parsnip - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
It appears you would like to marry Francois Piednoel? Replyjabber - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - link
Who is Francois Pedofile?Never heard of him. Reply
529th - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
I don't see this mentioned in the review nor the benchmarks, someone correct me if I am wrong but when those benches are made, are they made with Turbo disabled? If not, I don't see it as a fair comparison if you are running stock speeds when comparing a 3.3Ghz i7 2500K vs a 3.33Ghz i7 975 You have games that make use of all cores, and some that use only a few.. so you may get a higher turbo on a Sandy Bridge chip. This is not exact science but making the GHz speed into an exact comparison without Turbo enabled gives a little more insight into the product..just sayin Reply
PubFiction - Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - link
This is just a final release to cap off Phenom 2 they know they were beat they are just giving a little speed boost to it for more value. If this was bulldozer then ya it would be bad but we already know what phenom 2 has to offer why is there so much discussion around a final revision chip. They are just throwing out what may be the most speed they can with that core until BD arrives. ReplyCasper42 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - link
"AMD originally introduced the Phenom II architecture over two years ago to compete with Intel's Core 2 lineup. Intel has since been through one major microarchitecture revision (Sandy Bridge) and Phenom II is beginning to show its age."Am I missing something or just not counting properly.
Phenom II introduced to compete with Core 2
Intel then Introduces Nehalem/Westmere
Intel then Introduces Sandy Bridge
So wouldn't Intel have been through 2 major architecture revisions? Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - link
Phenom II came to market after Nehalem. Yes, it wasn't exactly meant to compete with it, and was more about sorting out what Phenom did wrong, but the unfortunate truth is that the i7 beat it to market.529th - I think the issue would be that you would be disabling a feature and thus not showing accurate performance, however that in itself would show the difference given by having Turbo in the first place. Doing the same with Thuban would be interesting.
Zosma would've made more sense than continuing on with Deneb, however AMD quickly shelved that idea. Reply