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
Final Words
Today's conclusion is no different than what we've been saying about AMD's CPU lineup for several months now. If you're running applications that are well threaded and you're looking to improve performance in them, AMD generally offers you better performance for the same money as Intel. It all boils down to AMD selling you more cores than Intel at the same price point.
Applications like video encoding and offline 3D rendering show the real strengths of the Phenom II X6. And thanks to Turbo Core, you don't give up any performance in less threaded applications compared to a Phenom II X4. The 1090T can easily trump the Core i7 860 and the 1055T can do even better against the Core i5 750.
You start running into problems when you look at lightly threaded applications or mixed workloads that aren't always stressing all six cores. In these situations Intel's quad-core Lynnfield processors (Core i5 700 series and Core i7 800 series) are better buys. They give you better performance in these light or mixed workload scenarios, not to mention lower overall power consumption.
The better way to look at it is to ask yourself what sort of machine you're building. If you're building a task specific box that will mostly run heavily threaded applications, AMD will sell you nearly a billion transistors for under $300 and you can't go wrong. If it's a more general purpose machine that you're assembling, Lynnfield seems like a better option.
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Calin - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Unfortunately in my experience, antivirus seems hard-drive limited even on Conroe dual core processors.kmmatney - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I would agree. Going to an SSD will probably make more difference than adding more cores, when it comes to everyday multitasking.KaarlisK - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
You're lucky, both MSE and AVG usually hit 100% of one core both for my 1.8 and 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duos.Taft12 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Frankly, the list of apps you provide would run just fine on a single-core CPU.beginner99 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
yep, like on my netbook with a z520 atom. AVG + utorrent + FF or chrome no issue (unless of course hd flash movies but that's another story).On my desktop (which is also a pretty old and crappy e4300) i also have seti@home. so basically i'm always at 100% cpu but still feel the hdd is limiting.
Scali - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Yes it makes sense... things like browsers, IM, email don't take a lot of CPU. They can easily be juggled by the OS on just a single core (or with hardware, using HT).More processes don't necessarily require more cores.
I mean, I am currently running two instances of Visual Studio, a browser with 10 tabs open, Skype, Spark, Notepad++, Outlook and a few other small things in the tray or background, and my dualcore still is at 1% CPU usage, according to Task Manager, and that 1% CPU is Task Manager itself. So why would I want 4 cores, let alone 6?
It really doesn't matter.
eekamouse - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I think there is something really good that could be tested here, the performance of these chips running virtual machines especially with hypervisor technology..Any possibility of testing these chips running either xen or vmware and seeing how 4 virtual machines react on each and how 6 react ? is the performance stable etc ? The reason I ask this is for the price point if it can run 6 virtual machines all running off of their own core or sharing cores and can maintain a good performance, it would be really worthwhile investing in these for cheap virtualisation servers..
rickcain2320 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
That's all you need to know. Time to ditch my Q6600.fitten - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Well... we haven't seen the consumer priced hex-core Intel parts yet... Everybody is comparing this to the high-end Intel parts (i7-980X is a high-end part). I'll wait to see what Intel's response is before removing them from the table.formulav8 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Enjoy! the waiting game... I still doubt Intel would lower prices near AMD's 6 core do to the fact that they will be ruining their much more profitable mainstream parts.Jason