AMD's Winter Update: Athlon II X3 455, Phenom II X2 565 and Phenom II X6 1100T
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 7, 2010 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
- Athlon II
- Phenom II
Final Words
As a speed bump, today's launch doesn't really change anything. The Athlon II X3 455 continues to be the best buy at under $90, picking up where the 450 left off. Intel hasn't updated the Pentium G6950 since its release nor has it dropped the price of the Core i3 530, leaving AMD with a much better option across the board. If you are lucky enough to get a fourth working core on your X3, well, you can't get better than that.
The Phenom II X6 1100T at $265 is near the sweet spot for price/performance, and I'd say the 1090T at $235 is probably right at it. In many cases you get Lynnfield-like performance and in heavily threaded apps there's no comparison. Single threaded performance is still an Intel advantage, however the gap is narrowing. When the Phenom II X6 launched its price limited it to those users who needed tons of threads, the recent price drops have expanded its appeal.
The Phenom II X2 565 BE is interesting only as a potential triple or quad-core part. Unfortunately it's a risky proposition. Our 565 BE sample only had one functional albeit disabled core, the fourth core was pretty much dead. If you can get a part with four working cores, the 565 BE is a great value. Even with three working cores it's good, but neither of these two outcomes is guaranteed.
I'd say that's the wrapup in order of success. The Athlon II X3 is an easy win, the Phenom II X6 ranges from competitive with Lynnfield to a great value and the Phenom II X2 is a nice chip to tweak but uninspired at stock.
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Aone - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Unfortunately, the auther didn't explain the big and strange difference between the idle power figures of Athlons and Phenoms.For instance:
Athlon II X3 455 (3.3GHz) - 63.9W,
Athlon II X3 440 (3.0GHz) - 80.3W!
Phenom II X4 970 (3.5GHz) - 66.9,
Athlon II X4 645 (3.1GHz) - 75W!
Athlon II X4 635 (2.9GHz) - 79.5W!
shooty - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I am also interested in this difference... specifically the x2 555 vs the x2 565.Almost a 20W difference in idle and a 40W difference at load!
What is going on to give this huge difference for (just) a clock bump?
Anand, can you please post tested voltages of these cpus? I know from my experience that some motherboards put them at a higher stated voltage (above 1.4v).
BTW, I'm 2 for 2 in getting the two extra cores to be stable on the 555.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
not only that but the lowwer Ghz chip was beating the higher Ghz chip in games.Maybe there is more than just a speed bump?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
As I mentioned in the test page our older Athlon II/Phenom II numbers were run on a 7-series board vs. the new 890GX board we switched to in the last review. I've pulled the conflicting numbers to avoid confusion :)Take care,
Anand
semo - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I'm pretty sure the X2 chip offers directed I/O and possibly better vm performance than the X3. It would be interesting to find out.Also I don't like it when the front page introduction differs from the main article's. I think you should keep it consistent across all front page articles (news or reviews).
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I have a Phenom 2 x6 1090T.Now I'm wondering why you didn't push more voltage through that chip? It can handle 1.45volts with a decent cooler easily enough which would have pushed you over that 4ghz mark.
I'm also surprised at the large performance difference the 100mhz increase in clockspeed provided in the benchmarks between the 1090T and the 1100T!
108fps for the 1090T and 120fps for the 1100T.
That's what... 10-12% improvement for just 100mhz? Doesn't seem to add-up in my eyes.
Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Just because your chip can handle 1.45V, doesn't mean that any chip can.nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Thubans can reach 4.0GHz at 1.4V, that's true for almost all the Thuban parts.MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The board has changed. Such things matter in games.MrS
chester457 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I use 7zip everyday and find your 7zip benchmark a little misleading. I'd prefer if you just did a bench with only 2 cores enabled. PAR2 already tests 3+ core archiving. By using 7zip you're invoking real-world performance because 7zip is a program many people use daily. It'd be nice to have the 2 core (real-world) performance instead of a theoretical one no user can ever hit.