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
The Performance Summary
At $199 and $285 the obvious comparison points are Intel’s Core i5 750 and Core i7 860. We’ll dive into the complete performance tests in a bit, but if you’re looking for some quick analysis here’s what we’ve got.
Single threaded performance is squarely a Lynnfield advantage. Intel’s quad-cores can turbo up more and Intel does have the advantage of higher IPC.
| Phenom II X6 vs. Intel's Lynnfield Processors | |||||||
| Cinebench R10 (Single Threaded) | Cinebench R10 (Multithreaded) | 3dsmax r9 | x264 HD - 2nd Pass | Left 4 Dead | |||
| AMD Phenom II X6 1090T | 3951 | 18526 | 13.7 | 28.5 fps | 127.2 fps | ||
| AMD Phenom II X6 1055T | 3547 | 16268 | 12.7 | 25.1 fps | 111.5 fps | ||
| Intel Core i7 860 | 4490 | 16598 | 15.0 | 26.8 fps | 131.0 fps | ||
| Intel Core i5 750 | 4238 | 14142 | 13.4 | 21.0 fps | 130.0 fps | ||
Highly threaded encoding and 3D rendering performance are obviously right at home on the Phenom II X6. The 6MB L3 cache and lower IPC does appear to hamper the Phenom II X6 in a couple of tests but for the most part if you need threads, the X6 is the way to go.
Applications in between generally favor Intel’s quad-cores over the Phenom II X6. This includes CPU-bound games.
None of this should be terribly surprising as it’s largely the same conclusion we came to with the Athlon II X3 and X4. If you run specific heavily threaded applications, you can’t beat the offer AMD is giving you. It’s the lighter or mixed use workloads that tend to favor Intel’s offerings at the same price points.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
168 Comments
View All Comments
JGabriel - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Good point - and yes, it does. But revenue from the microprocessor unit also increased by 23%, according to Businessweek ( http://www.businessweek.com/idg/2010-04-15/amd-swi... )..
kenupcmac - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - link
so now amd x6 is better for 3dmax compare to intel i7?Drazick - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Could you add some Matlab Benchmarks?Moreover, do you think most of the performances advantage of Intel processors comes from highly optimized code (Towards Intel Cores)?
It's something that should be investigated.
gruffi - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Yes, absolutely. I wished more GCC builds would be benchmarked. Intel's architecture is not as good as many people believe. Most of Intel's advantages come from better software support.pjconoso - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Intel 6-core early adopters will feel like they were ripped-off. I have the Asus USB 3.0 (for review) for a few weeks now and I'm waiting for this processor to test it with - thanks for the review, I'm sure it'll help me a lot.Scali - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Ripped off? Why?The performance of this six-core is nowhere near the Intel 980X.
This six-core can barely keep up with Intel's faster quadcores.
pjconoso - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Well, in my opinion the difference in performance versus the price doesn't justify it. They look nice in a bar graph and all like the video encoding performance but in reality, its just a few seconds.fitten - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
It's all "just a few seconds". I'm going to wait for the Intel's consumer-priced hex-cores before I do anything. Right now, AMD needs 50% more cores to even match Intel's parts in heavily threaded code. Running out right now and buying all new kit might be leaving you feeling like "cores on the ground" if Intel comes out with the consumer-priced stuff. ;)Scali - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Price/performance has always been on an exponential scale.AMD was no different when their Athlon FX were the fastest CPUs around.
Intel doesn't call them Extreme Edition for nothing.
I just get tired of people who go around on the internet telling everyone that Intel only has $1000 CPUs, and therefore Intel is overpriced.
The fastest PC on the market is just $1000, has been like that for decades, regardless of whether it was an AMD or Intel. Just seems to be how the market works.
pjconoso - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I just get tired of people who go around on the internet telling everyone that Intel only has $1000 CPUs, and therefore Intel is overpriced.Sorry man, but this isn't what I'm implying which is why there is a "in my opinion" on my explanation. It was really just a personal opinion, nothing else.