AMD Shanghai/Deneb Review Thread

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Originally Posted by roofsniper

the thing here is that most of us are enthusiasts. we buy the parts because we like them. for more mainstream users they might look at the graphs and think differently and choose intel over amd but most of us here don't need absolute performance. most people just like tweaking and messing around with the systems to get more performance. so deneb is a dream for amd users. im really happy with the power consumption since it blows the original phenom out of the water and i bet running it at 3.5ghz would produce the same or less power than my phenom 9600 does at 2.3. it does stay really close to the core 2's power consumption even with the imc and large l3 cache too. and the fact that cool and quiet can reduce the clocks down to 800 mhz and the below 1V is just nice for me.

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What he said.
:clap:
Could not agree more.

Any HTT overclocking reviews?
I'd like to see a comparison of a multiplier and a HTT overclocked 940.
Benchmarks (even though I don't expect much difference), temps and power consumption.

uncle jimbo, Now that the reviews are out and power consumption is known do you still think that "the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable."

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Originally Posted by gallag

uncle jimbo, Now that the reviews are out and power consumption is known do you still think that "the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable."

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Well, it probably is too low by 20-50%, but it won't be 200W as suggested earlier.
67W 4core Prime @3GHz is not bad. (and that's before PWM, radiator is dissipating 5-25% less due to PWM efficiency)

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Originally Posted by gallag

uncle jimbo, Now that the reviews are out and power consumption is known do you still think that "the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable."

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well for the cpu alone it might be correct. we are seeing under 200W for the entire system load and as lightman said the pwms use a lot of power. i wish someday people would design some good ones. or get something better than passive cooling on them.

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Originally Posted by gallag

uncle jimbo, Now that the reviews are out and power consumption is known do you still think that "the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable."

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Let me put this in perspective -
I did a fair amount of testing on a C2D E8600, which is IMO a great combination of speed and low power. I was able to set it up to deliver 4G with idle power of 30W and load power around 80W at 1.26 vCore. Total power to the board was 220W... so RAM and chipset used nearly twice as much power as the processor itself.

Because of improved power management, i7 has lower idle power, but runs up at load. A 965 at stock clock and voltage was under 25W at idle, but over 140W at load. Power to the board on the 965 was over 290W at load.

I have tested the ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe MB, which uses 790FX. I have found that with a 4830 graphics card, with 4GB of DDR2, and the processor load subtracted, it draws around 90W with a CPU intensive load and everything at stock voltage. That can go up a lot with increased voltage on RAM and chipset - up to 120W or more.

So with a number of phenom II screen shots showing total load at 170W, 180W and such at speeds near 4G, it does seem reasonable that the processor is drawing less than 100W of the total.

But all of that is guesswork until I get one of the Phenom II chips and test it myself. There is not enough good data available from other testers to do more than a ball-park estimate.

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Originally Posted by roofsniper

lol and everyone tells me that frosty tech sucks.

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I can't comment on their other review work, but their heatsink characterization method is perfect.

thanks jimbo, I look forward to your results.

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Originally Posted by Uncle Jimbo

I can't comment on their other review work, but their heatsink characterization method is perfect.

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yea thats what i use them for. i think many people look at it and see that they put the TRU above the TRUE and just disregard them. thanks for the info on this.

Hmm at least idle it uses the same as my 9500 ;-) can't do much more atm because my PSU isn't too shabby... and still trying to find out why some things act a bit weird (got a Scythe Musashi with 2 fans, one runs @1250 while the other runs @2050, and my all new artic freezer extreme is going fast/slow/fast/slow/etc and give unreliable RPM numbers, while my fancontroller works flawless with all other PWM fans....:shrug:

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Originally Posted by Uncle Jimbo

Correct - the 'I' you are measuring may or may not be going to the CPU, and likewise you don't know what 'E' actually gets supplied internally, but there is no question about the heat load.

Here's a good write-up on heatsink characterization by some guys who actually know what they are doing:
http://www.frostytech.com/testmethod_mk2.cfm

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So you measure temp at the base of heatsink? So that means the better your heatskink is at dissipating the heat, the lower the temp at the base of the heatsink should be, correct? So how does heat translate into the PIE formula? Power is still a function of current and voltage so how would lowering the temp of the heatsink affect power draw?

After reading almost all the PhII reviews on the net i came to at least one conclusion about the OC tests carried out by the reviews that most of them were utter arse holes at the job.

Some sites were BIAS enough to use the default AIR HSF and overclock and then rate the max OC at 3.4-3.5Ghz what the hell is that suppose to be.

Others upped the Ghz but not the Voltage enough or touching the HTT with an excuse that something was apparently wrong with their sample.

Then there were the great peple who say we used Win 64 for the test and in their i7 review they used win 32 bit wtf.

Seems that the whole pc community is ruled by Intel or something too many simple mistakes made by pro people. Also the fact that in most games the PhII's had min FPS around I7 920's min FPS rate was not mentioned in the conclusion...

I've something weird, running the stresstest of AMD overdrive my Phenom II core temp goes to 63 degrees celsius and settles there. Much higher then in the reviews... also my motherboard reports a 55 degrees celsius temperature(which is measured the old fashion way. All at idle and on C&Q it's about 38...

Is my HSF mounted wrong, are their numbers incorrect or am I just crazy?

My CPU cooler is the Freezer Extreme. Not a bad cooler by any means...

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Originally Posted by The PyroPath

I've something weird, running the stresstest of AMD overdrive my Phenom II core temp goes to 63 degrees celsius and settles there. Much higher then in the reviews... also my motherboard reports a 55 degrees celsius temperature(which is measured the old fashion way. All at idle and on C&Q it's about 38...

Is my HSF mounted wrong, are their numbers incorrect or am I just crazy?

My CPU cooler is the Freezer Extreme. Not a bad cooler by any means...

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Start with remounting heatsink and if that doesn't work try using an other program to read temps and possibly look at BIOS rev for your motherboard.

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Originally Posted by qurious63ss

So you measure temp at the base of heatsink? So that means the better your heatskink is at dissipating the heat, the lower the temp at the base of the heatsink should be, correct? So how does heat translate into the PIE formula? Power is still a function of current and voltage so how would lowering the temp of the heatsink affect power draw?

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A CPU is not a resistive load, and actual draw varies from one microsecond to the next. There is also no way to determine 'I' for a CPU unless you instrument the VRM. So it's not practical for most people to use P=I*E since they can only guess at 'I'. We do know that a CPU does no mechanical work, so all of the input power is turned into heat. Basically the heatsink method gives that power directly.

Since we know (or can determine) the thermal resistance of the heatsink, we can determine the power dissipated by applying the thermal resistance Tr (in C/W) where C is the difference between the base and ambient temperature. The formula is Crise / Tr = Wload. The actual temperature at the base, along with ambient, is only used to determine the rise.

Lowering the temperature at the base will have some effect on total power, but not very much unless the change is large. It's always best to use a big cooler, but the goal is to get rid of the heat, not reduce power.

If for some reason you want to calculate amps input, and you know power (from the heat load) and E (from the Vcore) you could use I=P/E to find amps... but unless you are designing a VRM, I'm not sure why you would do that.

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Originally Posted by Uncle Jimbo

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Uncle Jimbo what do you make of this?

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Originally Posted by [XC] gomeler

I am certain that the reason so many overclocks by reviewers were so low was the sheer lack of experience with the systems. I was afraid of blowing up my sample before the launch date so I stuck with a conservative 1.45vCPU which yielded a paltry 3800MHz. Now that the article is live, I'm blasting 1.55vCPU through this chip at 4200MHz and climbing :up:

The biggest issue I have though is the lack of temperature readings, I'm currently using a thermalprobe wedged up against the IHS of the actual CPU to get a ballpark figure :-\ It's reading around 55C at idle while the thermal diodes on the chip still read 19C :down:

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From here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=213691&page=5

jimbo doesn't some of the power get burned off as sound? not much but a little? thats why the computer makes noise even when all fans are off?

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Originally Posted by Zucker2k

Uncle Jimbo what do you make of this?

From here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=213691&page=5

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Not sure what to say about this... he doesn't give a lot of detail, and the numbers make no sense

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Originally Posted by roofsniper

jimbo doesn't some of the power get burned off as sound? not much but a little? thats why the computer makes noise even when all fans are off?

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Probably not a lot of power going out as sound. think about those singing xmas cards that still play a year later, off a watch battery. :D

Remounted HSF, re-applied thermal grease, switched fan from controller to motherboard connector. Relocated RAM so it doesn't block CPU cooler airflow.

Result: stressed=58 idle=38, but my room is a lot colder at night ;-) So I don't think it really worked...

allready updated the bios, checked the thermal grease again, it's applied the way it should be.:shrug:

used overdrive, bios and speedfan to determin temperature, all tell me the same, so I doubt they are all wrong...

I'm going to try the stock hsf tomorrow, I'm done for tonight...

Are people really happy with PII's? Well can't speak for all but i sure am. $230-$275 chip ready to drop into existing system. Low power low heat, undervolts and overclocks like crazy on air, more with water, lots more with cold. It is a cheap overclocking chip with respecatalbe performance that is a stepping stone between agena and 6 core chips with DDR3.

As someone noted, AMD started off with a 3ghz part in a new series. Where they usually start off with 1.8ghz - 2.3ghz or so and end up with 2.6ghz -3.0 within the next few months. Stands to reason that the coming months will yield 3.4ghz - 3.8ghz with refined process and design enhancements. Which would indicate that what was already doing 4ghz on air in overclock would get a further push as the cores are tweaked, while existing chips drop further in price.

Have i missed something? Should this make me sad?

I don't really care much about intel's $800-$1000 platform minus the gpu being at the top of performance mountain. Really didn't expect an I7 killer because it was never AMD's intention. Why? Because that isn't where 95% of the market is. Where AMD has clearly won is in power consumption, both system and cpu, heat output, cost and upgrade pathway.

It's an overclocking chip. It's cheap, i can run my games in 19x12. Why cue the sad panda?

As for the power consumption, almost every site i've seen is testing Total System Draw as UJ pointed out. Almost useless for finding cpu power as...and this is a surprise, when the system is stressed, power draw is increased on everything. NB, SB HD, RAM, GPU, AND the cpu.So a total system draw of below 200w under load is fairly impressive considering that was closer to what phenom 1s consumed when overclocked alone and what I7s consume now.

But then as ajaidev pointed out the reviews in general were dissapointing in how they were actually carried out, lots of intel bias, which is more and more usual, after market cooling for intel and stock for amd while OCing, no OCing results despite posting the numbers the 64bit listing and 32bit testbed is a common tactic i've seen countless times when Intel and AMD are compared.

Have to agree with knopflerbruce, Anantech shouldn't be the deciding factor their reviews and reccomendations have had less and less weight as they end almost every review with a bit of optimism in how intel will negate AMD or nvidia will negate ATI's new part. Yes intel might do this and intel might do that.

In a perfect world intel would fess up and change the marketing slogan for I7's to "Amd inside" But that would be truth in advertising and that's just an oxymoron.

The only reliable source of hardware info more and more seems to be first hand testing or in forums, getting info from unbiased and knowlegable sources.

Comparing AMD to intel seems to be like two people arguing on the phone about the tempature with one inside ...
"it's hot in my house
it's cold outside
but...it's hot in my house
well its cold outside

Both are right, and true, but neither one is relevant to the other.

$800-$1000? Where are you getting your numbers? I just purchased an i7 920, 3GB DDR3, and the Gigabyte X58-DS4 for $750 Canadian; that's $630 US.

And my point is you do not even need to compare it to i7, Just intels low-med quads, And total system draw is not important now? Temps are a lot higher than people thought? Overclocking is not as good as the es samples AMD sent out to be leaked? IPC still below kentsfield? And people think this is a great result? Come on, Sure you can make the argument that it is as good as any cpu when gpu limited etc but that is nothing new. Dont get me wrong, It is ok and will help AMD a lot because people like me will actually consider AMD now instead of instantly thinking Intel when planing low end builds for people, But it is a far way from great. I was hopping for something that would be competitive against i5 when it comes out but instead AMD will be competing with low end quads by then. Basicaly the performance gap between i5-i7 and ph2 is bigger than the performance gap between penryn and phenom1. Still, every build I do atm has a hd4850 in it so AMD are not left out in the cold.

Found my problem, replaced with stock cooler and get lower temps in a warm room, 58 under load and 36 at idle, looked at the surface of my cooler and the prolem seems to be that the base has a few little sharp points that aren't supposed to be there, it even marked my brand new CPU :-( So I'll be going for a little journey to get it replaced:down:

Updated with some of the current reviews, yay!