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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silverblue - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
You've overclocked your 870, but to what speed?mapesdhs - Monday, December 20, 2010 - link
(sorry for the delay! Been busy fighting snow...)
it's currently at 4270MHz (203.3 x 21) with HT on, ie. see:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1507189
With my original 860, I couldn't get it over 4018 and to reach that
I had to use a much higher Vcore:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1295195
Like I say though, this is a gaming rig but so far I've yet to find
a game/test which benefits from HT. Tests/benchmarks aside
however, the games I'll actually be playing are Oblivion, Stalker,
CoD4, Red Faction Guerilla, Borderlands, Haxw2 and CoD WaW
(mostly the first two initially). If these don't gain from HT either,
then I'll just turn it off and move the clock up to 4444 to give
better frame rates. I could run it higher I'm sure given the lowish
Vcore, but there's just no need.
Oh, here's the CPU-Z with the CPU at 4444 and HT is off:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1506944
Full benchmark results available later today (Ungine Heaven,
Tropics and Sanctuary, Stalker COP, X3TC, Cinebench,
3DMark06 and Viewperf; Vantage, AvP and 3DMark11 results
coming later when I can do them). Comparisons atm cover 8800GT
(single and SLI), GTX 460 1GB (single and SLI) and, where my
friend has been able to contribute, Radeon 4890 (single and CF)
along with his own GTX 460 SLI results.
Ian.
Jamahl - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Anand your gaming benchmarks are pathetic, when are you going to use proper games? You fine well know that you are benching massively cpu bound titles. Get it sorted or put them into your cpu benchmarks.kevith - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
It's a CPU review...Vengeful Giblets - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
Sometimes I wish that I could find curiosity articles, but I know that these comparisons consume a lot of time so I understand why such articles don't exist. Perhaps I shall do my own comparisons and post the results? Hm.Anyway, I'm finally upgrading my system. I've loved this Q6600 quad core and it's still a fantastic processor, but it's become my gaming system's bottleneck. Of course, it's not like I can simply jump up to the next CPU so it was time to overhaul the whole rig. Ouch. Just ouch. I rather dislike doing that. On the bright side, I won't need to do this again for another few years. :) Maybe I should begin saving now... Heh...
I'm curiously wondering what kind of performance gains I'm going to see when moving from the Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz quad core to the X6 1100T 3.3 GHz hexacore. Actually, I expect it to operate in triple core 3.7GHz mode most of the time, because how often will I actually using all six cores? Probably about as often as I've used all four cores lol!
This is going to be a heck of a jump in raw speed alone, then factoring in the technology improvements (not just the cores, but the whole package) since the Q6600's era and I'm hoping for a very noticeable improvement. Granted, everything else is changing too.
Intel did fine by me with its $300-some Q6600. Fine indeed. It has been awhile since I've ran an AMD rig, but I hope that AMD does just as well with its $270-some 1100T.
I sure wish that motherboard manufacturers made this easier on us consumers. Hopefully one day we'll look back on this need to own a different board for everything and see it as the dark ages that it is.
Oh well, at least my new motherboard will be AM3 compatible.