AMD Phenom II 920 & 940 Full Review

[demonkevy666]

This is why:

Check out my idle temps in everest; yes, software but relatively spot on. I know, can't believe it myself, especially since I'm on a C1, instead of a EO.

Good enough, YOu show me a PII beating that.

I can't beat the 4ghz on phenom, but I've used 1.45 volts on this chip can gotten 44C. at idle 3.2ghz. also note I'm in 64 bit so I'll still have higher temps then most user in XP.

also id still depends on what your using to cool it.

[Zucker2k]

Nice PII you have good temp
Err...that's not PII!!!
What's the point?

i thought you said 1.35V was bad on an AMD cpu?

AMD uses a totally different process then Intel, you cannot compare those
maybe 1.35V sucks on Intel's HKMG bulk cmos, but is quite common on a SOI proces

so please dont compare bananas to Lychees

Notice that is at 4.Ghz? Let's see a PHII do that.

how are your Q2C idle temps relevant to P2?

Fixed; I meant idle volts/watts.

[Extelleron]

Why is 1.35V bad?

The operating voltage of Phenom II is higher than the original Phenoms, I see that as a bad thing. In terms of power consumption it is not going to be pretty, there is a reason both the 920 & 940 have 125W TDP. Now it is obvious that AMD's 45nm process is a big improvement over 65nm but the power results we have seen have been with chips clocked lower and with much lower voltages. For example the old reviews of RB-C0 Phenoms clocked at 2.2GHz and with 1.224 volts, the power consumption was impressive. But crack it up to 3.0GHz with 1.35V..... power consumption will soar.

I'll reserve final judgment until more thorough reviews appear with ocing/power consumption and more tests, but so far Phenom II does not live up to the hype we have seen recently. Once again AMD built up insane hype for a chip and once again that hype is turning against them. Deneb is what we expected it to be, it is Agena with additional cache and on 45nm, allowing for higher clocks, ~5-10% better performance/clk, and lower power consumption..... it is nothing more and nothing less. It is good competition for the Q6600 / Q9400 and will perhaps shake up some of Intel's lower end lineup if pricing is good. But it is still not competition for Q9550 and higher, pricing on those chips remains at Intel's discretion (which is horrible for consumers, if you haven't noticed we have seen very few price drops this past year or so as AMD has become more and more uncompetitive). Certainly there is no pressure to lower prices on Core i7 CPUs or motherboards, as they remain in a league of their own right now in most applications.

[Tiridum]

Notice that is at 4.Ghz? Let's see a PHII do that.

Yes I have seen that, but I don't get your point.
Intel's 45nm process used on Core2 starts using A LOT of power when you reach over 3.8+Ghz

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/p...1228/16135.png

but you cannot say this will happen to phenom2 too, because of the differences in manufacturing technology

[gosh]

A dirt cheap to make product that they can sell into entirely new markets. The C2Ds they can save for the markets that are willing to pay a premium for performance/watt like in ultra-portable business class notebooks.

You should do some testing yourself on power usage for the computer, I don't think you are going to get those low values on Intel. I have done some testing my self and I don't really understand how some review sites has got the values they present.

[amdcian]

Why?

I think that price can keep AMD customers stay on, but can't attract Intel customers to switch AMD

[AbelJemka]

Notice that is at 4.Ghz? Let's see a PHII do that.

Fixed; I meant idle volts/watts.

The question is :
What's your Q9550 voltage means for PII power comsumption?

[Tiridum]

The operating voltage of Phenom II is higher than the original Phenoms, I see that as a bad thing. In terms of power consumption it is not going to be pretty, there is a reason both the 920 & 940 have 125W TDP. Now it is obvious that AMD's 45nm process is a big improvement over 65nm but the power results we have seen have been with chips clocked lower and with much lower voltages. For example the old reviews of RB-C0 Phenoms clocked at 2.2GHz and with 1.224 volts, the power consumption was impressive. But crack it up to 3.0GHz with 1.35V..... power consumption will soar.

I'll reserve final judgment until more thorough reviews appear with ocing/power consumption and more tests, but so far Phenom II does not live up to the hype we have seen recently. Once again AMD built up insane hype for a chip and once again that hype is turning against them. Deneb is what we expected it to be, it is Agena with additional cache and on 45nm, allowing for higher clocks, ~5-10% better performance/clk, and lower power consumption..... it is nothing more and nothing less. It is good competition for the Q6600 / Q9400 and will perhaps shake up some of Intel's lower end lineup if pricing is good. But it is still not competition for Q9550 and higher, pricing on those chips remains at Intel's discretion (which is horrible for consumers, if you haven't noticed we have seen very few price drops this past year or so as AMD has become more and more uncompetitive). Certainly there is no pressure to lower prices on Core i7 CPUs or motherboards, as they remain in a league of their own right now in most applications.

1) the 65nm process was very leaky, we don't know how the 45nm process reacts to voltage
2) AMD just showed what was capable with phenom2 in the frequency department, if people start yelling and screaming phenom2 will be a miracle chip after that, so be it....

[Extelleron]

Yes I have seen that, but I don't get your point.
Intel's 45nm process used on Core2 starts using A LOT of power when you reach over 3.8+Ghz

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/p...1228/16135.png

but you cannot say this will happen to phenom2 too, because of the differences in manufacturing technology

And Phenom II isn't going to be consuming a lot of power when it is overclocked to 4.0GHz with 1.6V, which seems to be what is required? When 3.0GHz/1.35V is already ~125W TDP.......... any CPU is going to consume a lot of power when you are pushing it to the limit with insane voltages/clocks.

[AbelJemka]

I think that price can keep AMD customers stay on, but can't attract Intel customers to switch AMD

I agree with you
Moreover for most with old computer AMD is now a viable choice and that's the important point here for me.

[Zucker2k]

The question is :
What's your Q9550 voltage means for PII power comsumption?

There's a reason why the PHII is rated for 125w TDP. That's your answer.

[roofsniper]

amp x volts = watts. just because the volts are higher doesn't mean the power consumption will be higher. my fan uses 12V but does that mean that it consumes more power than my cpu? no so stop using volts as a comparison. the volts have nothing to do with anything. phenom II uses more volts than i7 yet somehow from what we have seen so far it overclocks better. phenom II uses more volts than i7. yet somehow from what we have seen it has a lower power consumption. i don't believe you can use volts to compare different cpus. not even cpus of the same brand.

[roofsniper]

There's a reason why the PHII is rated for 125w TDP. That's your answer.

the tdp can't be used for a comparison at all. its the real power consumption that matters. i really don't even know why they put tdp on the box.

[Tiridum]

And Phenom II isn't going to be consuming a lot of power when it is overclocked to 4.0GHz with 1.6V, which seems to be what is required? When 3.0GHz/1.35V is already ~125W TDP.......... any CPU is going to consume a lot of power when you are pushing it to the limit with insane voltages/clocks.

Q9xx0 also has 95-125W TDP, we don't see that in reality do we?
everyone intel-minded says don't look at the TDP, your quadcores don't consume that much, but when AMD releases a quadcore with 125W, suddenly it is bad....

[Zucker2k]

amp x volts = watts. just because the volts are higher doesn't mean the power consumption will be higher. my fan uses 12V but does that mean that it consumes more power than my cpu? no so stop using volts as a comparison. the volts have nothing to do with anything. phenom II uses more volts than i7 yet somehow from what we have seen so far it overclocks better. phenom II uses more volts than i7. yet somehow from what we have seen it has a lower power consumption. i don't believe you can use volts to compare different cpus. not even cpus of the same brand.

Nobody is doing that; here, a chip is rated at 125W TDP @ 1.35v how much power you think it'll have to draw to reach that TDP? You work it out. I already know the answer and you don't accept it, so work out the math. We shall see.

[AbelJemka]

There's a reason why the PHII is rated for 125w TDP. That's your answer.

i7 TDP is 130W that's my answer

[Zucker2k]

i7 TDP is 130W that's my answer

And for i7 to reach 130W TDP, it's raw processing power will be 2x PII 940.

[Tonucci]

If it clocks like 3.6+ ghz on average and its priced fairly than it will be an nice alternative up to mid/high end

[demonkevy666]

Nobody is doing that; here, a chip is rated at 125W TDP @ 1.35v how much power you think it'll have to draw to reach that TDP? You work it out. I already know the answer and you don't accept it, so work out the math. We shall see.

again 9950 at 140 watt TDP used 101 watts while 9850 used at 125 TDP uses 104 watts.

[Tiridum]

And for i7 to reach 130W TDP, it's raw processing power will be 2x PII 940.

it's platform price also is 2* PII 940

[AbelJemka]

And for i7 to reach 130W TDP, it's raw processing power will be 2x PII 940.

the point is just TDP is not power compsumption...

[eric66]

i am sorry for ati seems they are gonna die with amd c'mmon amd you can do better than that at least game benchs at high res aren't bad and thats only positive thing about this new cpu

[Extelleron]

Q9xx0 also has 95-125W TDP, we don't see that in reality do we?
everyone intel-minded says don't look at the TDP, your quadcores don't consume that much, but when AMD releases a quadcore with 125W, suddenly it is bad....

Intel's TDP and AMD's TDP are two different things in general. Both technically are the maximum power usage, but AMD's CPUs tend to actually consume close to TDP under maximum load. Intel, on the other hand, bundles up together CPUs into "classes" and gives them all the same TDP, regardless of actual power consumption. For example, Intel rates all 45nm duals at 65W despite them consuming 30-40W at most, meanwhile AMD rates certain duals at 45W that consume more than chips that Intel rates at 65W. Same thing with quads....... Intel's 130W QX9650 consumes less than AMD's 95W launch Phenoms. In general, AMD's TDP is much more aggressive than Intel's TDP.

i7 TDP is 130W that's my answer

See above, and performance/W comes into factor there..... only time i7 gets close to consuming that much power is when all 8 threads are under use, and in an app that takes advantage of HT performance is going to be significantly higher for the Core i7 CPU.

[bowman]

Not sure what everyone is so shocked about. Phenom + more L3 + higher frequencies = faster than Q6600, mostly keeping up with Yorkfield but a little behind still. Anyone who claimed it'd be faster than Yorkfields and 'almost as good as Nehalem' clearly decided to not let facts get in the way of their search for fantasy and drivel.

It's not like it's a new architecture. Barcelona was the CPU division's R600, this is their RV670.. Now let's just hope they have an RV770 to show as well. Given their current roadmap where Bulldozer is mothballed and this arch will be milked until 2010 and beyond I am pretty damn pessimistic.

[demonkevy666]

Not sure what everyone is so shocked about. Phenom + more L3 + higher frequencies = faster than Q6600, mostly keeping up with Yorkfield but a little behind still. Anyone who claimed it'd be faster than Yorkfields and 'almost as good as Nehalem' clearly decided to not let facts get in the way of their search for fantasy and drivel.

It's not like it's a new architecture. Barcelona was the CPU division's R600, this is their RV670.. Now let's just hope they have an RV770 to show for as well. Given their current roadmap where Bulldozer is mothballed and this arch will be milked until 2010 I am pretty damn pessimistic.

Lets get them to SKIP 32nm and go straight on to bulldozer at 22nm.