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
AMD’s 890FX Chipset
The Phenom II X6 will work in all existing Socket-AM2+ and AM3 motherboards that can 1) support the 125W TDP of the processors, and 2) have BIOS support (apparently over 160 boards at launch). Despite this impressive showing of backwards compatibility, we also get a new chipset today for those of you looking to build a new system instead of upgrade.
The 890FX is a mildly updated version of AMD’s 790FX chipset, mostly adding AMD’s SB850 South Bridge with 6Gbps SATA support. The number of PCIe 2.0 lanes and other major features remains unchanged.
| AMD 890FX | AMD 890GX | AMD 790FX | |
| CPU | AMD Socket-AM3 | AMD Socket-AM3 | AMD Socket-AM3/AM2+ |
| Manufacturing Process | 65nm | 55nm | 65nm |
| PCI Express | 44 PCIe 2.0 lanes | 24 PCIe 2.0 lanes | 44 PCIe 2.0 lanes |
| Graphics | N/A | Radeon HD 4290 (DirectX 10.1) | N/A |
| South Bridge | SB850 | SB850 | SB750 |
| USB | 14 USB 2.0 ports | 14 USB 2.0 ports | 12 USB 2.0 ports |
| SATA | 6 SATA 6Gbps ports | 6 SATA 6Gbps ports | 6 SATA 3Gbps ports |
| IOMMU | 1.2 | N/A | N/A |
| Max TDP | 19.6W | 25W | 19.6W |
You get IOMMU support (an advantage over 790FX) and despite the chipset being built on TSMC's 65nm process, it pulls less power than the 890GX as it lacks any integrated graphics.
The Test
To keep the review length manageable we're presenting a subset of our results here. For all benchmark results and even more comparisons be sure to use our performance comparison tool: Bench.
| Motherboard: | ASUS P7H57DV- EVO (Intel H57) Intel DP55KG (Intel P55) Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX) MSI 890FXA-GD70 (AMD 890FX) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 2 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 (Vista 64) ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Windows 7 x64 |
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SRivera - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Applications that will use that much memory and memory bandwidth. Off the top of my head, I can only think of moderate-heavy database use. Too many people tend to look over the 1156 platform over to 1366 because of triple channel memory when in reality, even more heavy gamers, you're just never going to fully utilize that much memory or bandwidth.I run a 4GB system, running games and oodles of apps at the same time, I've never seen my memory jump past 3GB or far past it.
So it really comes down to what your use for a system like the i7 9xx & X58 would be if you will really need the triple channel bandwidth and extra memory.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Uncompressed HD editing easily uses more than 4GB RAM. Anyone using an X58 with a
Quadro card for professional work should definitely have 6GB minimum.
Ian.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Zero. That's the amount you have contributed to this thread.chrnochime - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Water closet? Haven't heard that term in YEARS.Peroxyde - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
For a machine used as a light VM Server, is AMD Thuban better than i5 750 ?Taft12 - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
A light VM server should probably use your old PC in the corner gathering dust.ant_ - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I was hoping to see some benchmarks in Battlefield Bad Company 2. I thought Anandtech had added it to the gaming tests. We know the game scales well using a quad core vs a dual. I was curious to see the difference between 4 vs 6 cores.toolonglyf - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
ya I'm a bit disappointed not seeing it there... I think it would have shown something interestingKranZ - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I'd be curious to see how this stands up in the VM tests you did earlier this year. At face value, it seems VMs = more threads and this proc would be of value.Crypticone - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I noticed the WOW benchmarks are missing from this CPU. Any chance of getting them added to the gaming page?