AMD's Fall Refresh: New Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs Balance Price and Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 21, 2010 2:52 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
- Athlon II
SYSMark 2007 Performance
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.
Let's go down the matchups shall we? The Phenom II X4 970 BE is competitive with the Core i5 750. Intel manages a 5.9% performance advantage in this comparison, but as I mentioned earlier the two chips will trade blows across much of our benchmark suite.
The Phenom II X6 1075T doesn't have a direct competitor but here it does worse than the cheaper Core i5 750. SYSMark is mostly a test of good dual-core performance and as a result Intel's turbo does more for performance here than AMD's 2-extra cores. It's a valid scenario to keep in mind as the number of applications that can stress all 6 cores are limited. Although when you're running one, there's generally no substitute for more cores.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the Phenom II X2 560 will easily lose to the Core i3 530 as the graph shows above. The same is true for the Athlon II X4 645. The chip gives you four cores at a very competitive price, but in a test that primarily stresses two cores the 645 doesn't get a chance to run.
The Athlon II X3 450 vs. Pentium G6950 matchup begins in Intel's favor, however this is the one and only time in our review that you'll see this happen.
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.
Our Photoshop benchmark has traditionally favored Intel's architectures, which is definitely visible when you look at the Phenom II X6 1075T and Phenom II X4 970 BE above. The Athlon II X4 645 does slightly better than the Core i3 530 (effectively on-par with the 540), while the Athlon II X3 450 does noticeably better than the Pentium G6950. You can also see why I'm not really interested in the dual-core parts. They perform well, but that third core does come in handy for very little added cost.
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Brucmack - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - link
I'm sure it's fairly easy to come up with a couple of realistic scenarios to use. There are only really three variables - # of hours idle over lifetime, # of hours load over lifetime, and average cost of power over lifetime - where it should be fairly easy to come up with some numbers to give a good idea. A useful metric might be to say "given a cost of electricty of X, the breakeven point between processors A and B is after Y hours of use".The whole point of benchmarks isn't to say "here's how it will perform for everyone!", but to give readers an idea of how the product performs in some specific (and hopefully realistic) situations, thereby allowing them to make informed decisions based on their own needs.
AtaStrumf - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I ditto that! Price is such an important factor it should be part of the graphs or do up a separate set of graphs with performance per $ per application, that'd be awesome. I know that ill be quickly outdated but just put date next to the graph and that'll make it very obvious to take that into consideration when looking at the graph.BernardP - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
The sweet spot is the AMD lineup seems to be the Phenom II X4 955BE. For $ 145, you get a fully enabled 3.2 GHz quad-core with L3 cache, that you can easily set yourself @ 3.6 GHz with little or no voltage increase.Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Yet it will still lose to the i5 750 in virtually every benchmark. The real "sweet" spot is being able to get an i5 750 for a good price. I've seen them on sale at some places for as low as $170-175. At that price you'd be crazy to choose a Phenom II X4 955BE over it.LordanSS - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Depends if all you have to do is just replace whatever processor you have in your socket, atm.In AMD's case, you can just swap out the processor on most AM2+ motherboards and it'll just work. On Intel's case, chances are you'll have to get a new motherboard (and quite possibly RAM, if your system is old enough).
Been thinking of getting one of those 955BEs for myself. Not much of an upgrade to my main machine that's running a 940BE, but then I can pass on my older processor to my second box which is running an X2-6000 of ancient times.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Why an obsolete CPU when for the price of an i5 quad you get a 1055T wich a better chip overall with a lot of future proof.Besides 1055T, X4 955 is only one option below it's price (then the value segment with AII X4/X3).
Dark_Archonis - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
Future-proof? You DO know that Bulldozer won't work in current AMD motherboards, right? What would you be upgrading to exactly from a 1055T? A Llano?Madmanden - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
Perhaps he meant 6 cores vs. 4 cores, so more future proof in regards to newer, more threaded software and games.KaarlisK - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Just look at the power consumption (even idle) of the newer chips compared to the older ones.Or maybe it's just binning.
quiksilvr - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
That's the big selling point for me. I'm willing to spend an extra $50 to save even 10 watts because over the life of the computer I will get that money back in electricity savings, maybe even more so.