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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vol7ron - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
"today we're getting speed bumps"Usually this term is associated with a slow down, not a push forward - you slow down at the speed bump. It's sort of like how you don't associate a stop sign with accelerating as fast as you can, which many do right after.
Other Thoughts: Perhaps you meant speed burst?
fic2 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Apparently you don't know that words can have multiple meanings.See #5 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bump
bump (bmp)
v. bumped, bump·ing, bumps
v.tr.
1. To strike or collide with.
2. To cause to knock against an obstacle.
3.
a. To knock to a new position; shift: bumped the crate out of the way.
b. To shake up and down; jolt: bumped the child on her knee; was bumped about on a rough flight.
4.
a. To displace from a position within a group or organization.
b. To deprive (a passenger) of a reserved seat because of overbooking.
5. To raise; boost: bump up the price of gasoline.
6. Sports To pass (a volleyball) by redirecting it with the forearms.
jabber - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
We shall see. If Intel has been 100% successful and reliable in one aspect of computing its dissapointing with its GPU performance.Always a lot of bluster and pre-release pomp about how it will be many times better than the previous piece of crap and then it hits the floor like a dead moose dropped from 50 feet.
I dont see that changing radically.
kwantor - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
How does that work exactly?On 2560x yes, you should get 100+fps on 1024x.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
They're using "Ultra CPU" settings to stress the CPUs. People are probably not really running the game like this.MrS
nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
It will be bulldozed by eight-core SNB-E, but surely it will bulldoze quad-core SNBs.flyck - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
lets wait and see shall we. If each BD core is faster then each K8 core it might be very close to it.MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Not sure about the US, but here in Germany the i7 860 has effectively been replaced by the i7 870 since a couple of months. It's 1 - 2 multipliers faster for a small price premium. Currently the 1100T is actually priced a hair above the 870.Given the approxiamte tie in threaded apps and wins for the 870 in lightly threaded apps and power consumption at any load level I'd certainly go with that one.
MrS
dertechie - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
They're comparing to i7 860 since they already have one on hand to play with, I suspect.mapesdhs - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
MrSpadge is right; when I went looking for one recently, I noticed many
stores had the 860 priced higher than the 870, or the gap was so small
that the 860 made no sense. So I bought an 870 instead.
Btw, it's a bit misleading IMO to include AMD oc results and yet not at
least briefly mention how well the Intel chips also oc, especially given earlier
reviews here of the i3 and other options, eg. I get 6.88 for Cinebench 11 with
my oc'd 870, 20442 for Cinebench 10 (and this isn't on the high side either).
I've found the 870 to oc better than my older 860 aswell, and not just because
of the base clock difference. It just seems to work better. I'm sure I could push
it to 4.5+, but there's no need for this on a gaming rig with two GTX 460s SLI.
Indeed, so far I find game fps scores are better with HT turned off and a
higher CPU clock, so even more headroom is possible (confirmed this effect
with 3DMark06, Unigine Heaven, Stalker COP and X3TC so far). With the
same Vcore/VTT, my 870 was ok at 4444 instead of 4270 with HT off, and
temps were lower. If you want max 3DMark06 overall scores, leave HT on;
to max out game fps rates though, try turning HT off and increase the raw
clock (I'd like to know which games benefits from HT - none of my current
tests show any gain).
Hmm, the '3dsmax 9 - SPECapc' test looks interesting, might give that a spin.
Is that a separate download to Viewperf 11?
Ian.