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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kenupcmac - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - link
so now amd x6 is better for 3dmax compare to intel i7?Wabid Wabit - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - link
Please check the site out, it is not a Intel Fanboy site or a AMD Fanboy site, but has the info you need, this page was an old post but the site has the info from then and now and it looks like - wait for it - wait for it - Intel just plain kicks ass - and all us Computer Geeks know that.http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
azizul.hoque - Monday, January 17, 2011 - link
Hi,Can I use this processor for 3D studio MAX?
tipoo - Saturday, May 7, 2011 - link
Of course you can use it.superccs - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link
I have disabled the middle 2 cores on my 1055T (240Mhz FSB auto voltage, CnQ, and Turbo enabled) and it works quite well at bringing down temps when gaming. When turbo core is active the voltage of all cores goes up to 1.475, so disabling the cores saves power and temps.This works well in the summer, during the winter all heaters are enabled.
rustamveer - Friday, July 29, 2011 - link
sir i wanted to upgrade my pc with amd phenom2 1090t and i' m new to amd processors.but sir please suggest me which motherboard i will choose i don't know much abt motherboard????
please also tell me the price rate in india of phenom2 1090t and motherboard????????
i will be very thankful to you....waiting for you reply!!!!!!!
archangel2003 - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
Sounds a lot like the cycle magazines touting one bike having 1.5 HP more than the other, but really, how much riding is done nearly bouncing off the rev limiter?Same thing with these chips.
How often are you going to experience the slight difference between these top of the line "at it's limits" Intel chip compared to the AMD at 1/3 the price?
I think the point of the article was that the huge cost savings of an AMD offsets the slight difference in performance.
BTW, all my computers have Intel only because that ia what they had in them, and if in the future I needed to make a choice, I would need better info like this article offeres.
I could have went with the AMD 6 core for less than my i7 IntelQuad core cost!
Somebody23 - Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - link
I have managed to push my 1090T to 4.2ghz all cores. it was mostly stable on benchmark.Downgraded 100mhz to 4.1ghz. It's stable at 4.1ghz computer doesnt bluescreen in 3 hours stability test.