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
Sonar 8 Audio Mixing Performance
In our only digital audio production test we take a multi-track recording and export it to a WAV file using Sonar 8. The benchmark isn't very well threaded and prefers two very fast cores to several slower ones:
As I mentioned before, this is the biggest issue with AMD's lineup. If you're running applications that can't use the extra cores, AMD's advantage typically disappears.
Gaming Performance
At the high end, AMD's Phenom II X6 and X4 lose to the similarly priced Lynnfields. In the middle the Athlon II X4 645 and Athlon II X3 450 do very well.
With the exception of the Phenom II X6 and X4 processors, AMD is generally competitive here. Intel maintains the performance advantage above $200. There's an unusual amount of variance in our tests here (particularly old vs. new AMD results). The variance appears to be caused by the platform shift as we moved all of our AMD testing to the same 890GX motherboard. The change in performance under Dawn of War II however doesn't really change the standings.
WoW performance is governed by two threads thus negating any core count advantage. AMD loses at the high end but is competitive around the $100 mark.
Starcraft 2 performance is something we're beginning to look at. Again we have a situation where a game doesn't use more than two cores. The Phenom IIs are slower than Lynnfield, while the multi-core Athlon IIs do well against their competitors. If you're building a fast Starcraft 2 box that doesn't have to do anything else, the dual-core CPUs do better here.
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Tanclearas - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Once again, I believe the biggest release AMD could make is the platform. I ended up going with a Q6600 a few years ago when I would have loved to choose AM2+. I have been happy with the Q6600, but I spent a lot more on it than I really wanted to at the time. I could have put together a system using a CPU that cost $200 less, then upgraded one or two years later with a significantly faster CPU.Fast forward to 2010 and the situation is quite similar. I would love to pick up an AM3+ based system with a Phenom II X4 and be ready for whatever AMD has coming. I would build that system right now, and AMD would be getting 2 CPU sales (unless things went horribly, HORRIBLY wrong with BD).
iuqidids_sm - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Is there any news about the 95W x6 cpu's, particularly the 1055? Apparently its on sale outside US, but I can't seem to find it from US based retailers. Thanks.Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Why don't you use 3DMax 2010 instead of an ancient version from 2005. Enough with the bias.Maybe because in this updated version Phenom II X6 perform better than any i7 quad?
bji - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I read alot of benchmark reviews. "This benchmark favors Intel" is a line I read quite frequently, and I always assume it's because compiler writers and/or software developers consciously choose to optimize for Intel chips (which makes sense since it's the larger part of the market). "This benchmark favors AMD" is not something I think I've ever read, at least not in a context that led me to believe that it's due to specific optimizations targeted at the processor. Why would 3DMax 2010 perform relatively better on Intel than 3DMax 2005 did? Is it because the newer version has been better optimized for Intel?In that case, is it more valid to use a newer version or an older version? I guess we want our benchmarks to reflect the non-benchmark software that will run on the platform, so I suppose that if most software is Intel-optimized, Intel-optimized benchmarks make sense. If not, then not.
I personally use Linux almost exclusively and I feel pretty confident that the GNU compiler toochain that is used for this operating system is not more optimized for one processor vendor than another - at least not intentionally, anyway.
In the for-money world of Microsoft and Intel with their backroom deals and shady business practices, however, I can't say for sure.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-cha...flyck - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I would expect Anand to have some form of moderation on this forum?Taft12 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link
You would think they would with this new forum software, but alas....lwatcdr - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link
Slashcode does.Why do we have to waste time reading dumb stuff like this?
I agree.
but alas....
hacksquad - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I hope you stop using intel's new cpu's cause it contain AMD technology which is x86-64/AMD64 :PStaples - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I think it would be more helpful if you gave percentages when overclocking in addition to ran clock numbers. It managed 4.0GHz does not mean as much as it achieved a stable overclock of 25% vs the other processor which managed a tiny 10%. Makes comparing things a lot easier.