AMD Shanghai/Deneb Review Thread

[roofsniper]

That's uncalled for man. We are all here to learn.

i really don't care. whether i know what i am talking about or not he will still find a way to bash me. its fine with me tho since i can't read any word he says and even if i did they are pointless. lmao just like when he says he knows more about amd than me.

[gosh]

What do you mean by that? Again, I could be wrong but at higher resolutions you actually testing the GPU and not the CPU since the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

The best processor is the processor that deliver most power on the lowest FPS areas. One way to filter out low FPS is to use a slow video card and/or increase the resolution.

Phenom is a very good game processor. I handles threading very well, the cache (L3) on Phenom is 32-way set associative and on Phenom II it is 48-way set associative. I think Core 2 is 8-way set associative (don't remember now).
Phenom has more places to put the memory in the cache, on Core 2 the memory don't have that many places and when memory use is increasing then Core 2 needs to go to main memory a lot more often compared to Phenom. The cache on Intel CPU is more sensetive when you multitask or games use a lot och memory from different areas (like when there is fights etc in the game).

Testing a game for 10 minutes and there is one action scene for 1 minute, then Intel will gain a lot more FPS on those 9 minutes when there is low activity in the game.

[Raiderman]

Benchmarking at higher resolutions also show how well the Phenom II scales with the gpu. 1440x900 should be the lowest resolution benched at, IMO.

[Aquineas]

Review back up at Hexus.

[Aquineas]

And HardOCP.

[Aquineas]

And Guru3d

[roofsniper]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ph...0-review-test/
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16147
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=16757
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...=667&Itemid=27
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2338338,00.asp
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...phenom-ii.html
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Ente...nom-II-X4-940/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-940,2114.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...d-920-review/1

here

[Aquineas]

And probably one of the more objective sites around, Tech Report.

[Aquineas]

here

Oops, hadn't seen that. My bad; I'll stop now.

[roofsniper]

Oops, hadn't seen that. My bad; I'll stop now.

lol np most people don't go outside of the amd forum. just thought id show it to people who missed it.

[Uncle Jimbo]

DFM, process tweaks, etc. is all good but my point is that their is no way that a 4ghz Phenom II will only dissipate 90W at load. If you are implying that this first batch of PII are "tweaked for low power" then they must also be "tweaked for higher speed parts" as well since they are running at 4ghz with 90W?? The poof is in the pudding, if this chip could run at that speed with that wattage then we would already of seen it released as an FX chip regardless of what their tuning their process to do. $$$$$$

I really don't know what they are tweaking for. I was pointing out that historically, AMD brings out parts at the 'design center', and as they tweak the process, they bring out both lower power and higher speed parts. In the server world, they already announced that there will be a high speed 'SE' and a low power 'LE' added to the Shanghai line in 2009. So my assumption is the same will happen with Phenom II.

As far as the wattage, the methods many reviewers use to measure power are measuring total board power or even total system power. Those might be interesting if you are concerned about total energy draw, but are pretty much useless for determining processor wattage, since they include chipset, RAM, and anything else on the board.

The method I use measures actual heat out from the processor. Once I get a 940 and test it. I'll be able to say for sure what the results are. Based on the few tests that gave enough information to do the calculation, the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable.

[crazydiamond]

did any of the reviews push NB?

[gallag]

the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable.

lol, You gotta be kidding. It will be closer to double that.

[Uncle Jimbo]

lol, You gotta be kidding. It will be closer to double that.

you know that bumper sticker that says 'Gravity - not just a good idea, it's the law'? That's kind of what you are doing. Not to be arrogant, but this is physics, not someone's opinion.

A heat load that produces a 10C rise on a .1 C/W calibrated sink is 100W. Doesn't matter if it is a resistor, a light bulb, or a CPU. Since I don't have one of the Phenom II parts, I have not done any direct testing. But I do know the thermal coefficients of many popular high performance coolers, and based on the heat numbers we have seen from a number of posters, it looks like the Phenom II parts are running pretty cool with decent overclocks.

The wattage of CPUs under various load conditions is one of the areas where even experienced techies get it completely wrong - like the guy who measured 170W by taking the amp draw on the secondary MB connector and multiplying by 12. However, at least on his 3.85G run, he was using a XIGMATEK HDT S983 V2, a good cooler with .13 C/W performance. Unfortunately, he did not measure temp at the base of the cooler, and give ambient, which would have allowed us to tell what his real CPU wattage was.

So you can think what you like - but the data out on the web points to significantly lower wattage than previous phenom, and probably in the ball park of the better C2D parts (which are also very impressive). The fact that most OC requires jacking up the NB and RAM voltage (which increases their dissipation) means that getting a CPU to CPU comparison is impossible using the methods most reviewers use. Measuring power draw at the wall is easy, but also not very useful for anything other than total system load. I have verified the accuracy of the thermal gradient measurement by comparing results with instrumented VRMs, and both give the same results.

[YukonTrooper]

did any of the reviews push NB?

I didn't look for that, actually. Basically, all the reviews managed to get 3.6-3.8 on air.

Conclusions that I gathered from all the reviews:

Pros:

- Good entry price
- Strong, although not spectacular, performance increase from Agena
- Good upgrade for current AM2+ users
- Good power consumption and price when whole Dragon platform is utilized
- AMD did what they needed to do to stay viable in the market

Cons:

- Not enticing enough to make current mainstream Intel users switch
- Intel could drop prices on Q9450/Q9550 to make things hard
- Reviewers still recommend Intel setup if starting from scratch

I think a lot will be determined by price. If AMD can manage to drop prices ~$40 in the next month or two, I think we'll see the market start to even out again. I just hope Intel doesn't drop prices on the Yorkies too much. We need AMD to gain some momentum here.

Go AMD! Make me proud once again!

[ajaidev]

Out of all the reviews Guru3D & hardwarecanucks were good.

Others said 3.5Ghz is the limit for Oc and that is just BS.


New review:-

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...=672218&page=1

http://www3.custompc.co.uk/reviews/6...k-edition.html

[qurious63ss]

The method I use measures actual heat out from the processor. Once I get a 940 and test it. I'll be able to say for sure what the results are. Based on the few tests that gave enough information to do the calculation, the estimate of under 100W at 4G seems reasonable.

I see. Well the method I was talking about uses the formula P=I*E. So Watts is a function of current and voltage. The way you are getting wattage numbers is by reading how much heat a chip generates?

[demonkevy666]

Out of all the reviews Guru3D & hardwarecanucks were good.

Others said 3.5Ghz is the limit for Oc and that is just BS.


New review:-

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...=672218&page=1

http://www3.custompc.co.uk/reviews/6...k-edition.html

I was reading some where when reivewing the i7 they where having troubles keeping stable at .36ghz so they brought it to water cooling and got 3.733ghz and yet they always Keep any AMD away from this kind of thing >_> typical bias reviews use water cooling on one and not the other.

[Caveman787]

Yep as I expected most reviews just wanna say deneb/ Phenom IIis no comparison to anything intel has....gotta love bias.

The overclocking saddens me aswell they never overclock nb/ht ot htt and they couldn't get higher than 3.6 stable I wonder why perhaps because that's all intel could usually get on q6600.

Power consumption...most didn't turn on cool and quiet etc. so they inflated idle consumption.

Funny how when they did do things right it was more equal between the 2 companies processor's...to those reviewers good job for not submitting to intel's payroll.

I mean come on how does phenom II manage to lose by 20 fps+ in a gpu limited situation?

[Uncle Jimbo]

I see. Well the method I was talking about uses the formula P=I*E. So Watts is a function of current and voltage. The way you are getting wattage numbers is by reading how much heat a chip generates?

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

[The PyroPath]

Just got back home with my sweet little puppy 940

I'll installing it for the next hour or so (adding some more stuff while I'm at it) yoo bad my new motherboard wasn't in yet... my Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 will have to do for another week or so (my dreaded friend asked me to order a graphics card from the same shop and now that one has gone from in stock to backorder all of the sudden)

So let's see what this baby can do, I'll report back on the wattage by the way, I have a Zalman fancontroller with watt's reading for the complete system. Isn't overly accurate but I can compare it to my Phenom 9500 I use ATM...

[Uncle Jimbo]

Solid and unbiased review from Anandtech. They think that early in 2009, it is likely that Intel will drop prices to change the competitive map, and that AMD will respond with higher speed parts, and so on. All in all should be a good year for overclockers...

Wait, what? An AMD CPU recommendation?

After over two years of us recommending Intel's Core 2 lineup almost exclusively, AMD finally released a real alternative, one that's not just similarly priced, but actually higher performing than the price-competitive Intel part.
...

If Intel were to push its prices down like that, the Q9550 would compete with the Phenom II X4 940, and the Core 2 Quad Q9400 would go up against the Phenom II X4 920 instead. If this happens, the conclusion I mentioned on the first page changes. The Phenom II X4 940 can't beat the Q9550, and the 920 can't beat the Q9400. Intel has the ability to do this; it's got faster chips that are more expensive and has just enjoyed 2+ years of unchallenged competition. The Intel from the Pentium 4 days may have let AMD launch Phenom II unchecked, but today's Intel is much more...dynamic.

The take away is that today Phenom II competes with the Q9400 and the Q8300, but by the end of this month that may change to the Q9550 and Q9400.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492

[YukonTrooper]

I wouldn't really call that a recommendation for Phenom II. It sounds more like what Intel can do to make it look like a less competitive chip.

[iandh]

I wouldn't really call that a recommendation for Phenom II. It sounds more like what Intel can do to make it look like a less competitive chip.

You know it's gotta be good if Anand likes it.


The thing is, you can get a Phenom II 920 as a combo deal with 790GX for $294 right now. That is a great crossfire board with incredible onboard video to boot. Intel is going to have to do some HARDCORE price slashing to compete with that value...

[gallag]

Are people really happy with ph2? I mean not even slightly disappointed? Read the comments on anandtech and others and it seems that most are disappointed, It still lacks clock for clock against all Intel quads and the overclocking and power consumption dont live up to the hype.