AMD Phenom II Review Thread

[noki]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...nd-920-review/

In this review when they pair Yorkfields with ddr2 ram the gap between deneb and yorkfield is very little...I think that with am3 mobos and dd3 ram...the step behind i7 will be deneb

[naokaji]

If you are right about Intel's relative peace(and I think you are), then unless Intel wants AMD to stick around, they will have the means to put them to the sword and finally get rid of them.

They always had the means to wipe them out, but they chose not to and even allowed them to sell x86 cpu's..

It was always by their choice that they let AMD live, same goes for Nvidia, Via, Sis, Ati (before it became amd).
Remember, Intel has one of the biggest R&d Budgets in the IT Industry, they could get rid of any Company they see as a Competition at any time they want with only a slight temporary financial set back, then just jack up the prices once the competition is gone to make up for it.

Anyway, Phenom 2 is going to give Intel some competition in the midrange market and once the cut down phenom 2's come out (dual / tri cores) also in the budget market, but don't forget that Intel does have a ace up it's sleeve, it's the I5 and will be much cheaper than I7.

[ether.real]

About those OCs...
Hands up kiddies, who thinks reviewers have time to tweak (ACC, etc.)?

Zucker2k,
And Dr.Who? has just as much credibilty. Might be even less - where's that i7 6GHz?

We had almost a month with these chips. No amount of tweaking would get mine over 3.7GHz.

[Smalltimer]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...nd-920-review/

In this review when they pair Yorkfields with ddr2 ram the gap between deneb and yorkfield is very little...I think that with am3 mobos and dd3 ram...the step behind i7 will be deneb

If that's the case, then AMD would have accomplished a great thing since the greatest profit margins come out of that sweet spot.

Very interesting...

[Chad Boga]

They always had the means to wipe them out, heck, they even had to give the ok for them to even start selling cpu's...
It was always by their choice that they let AMD live, same goes for Nvidia, Via, Sis, Ati (before it became amd).
Remember, Intel has one of the biggest R&d Budgets in the IT Industry, they could get rid of any Company they see as a Competition at any time they want with only a slight temporary financial set back, then just jack up the prices once the competition is gone to make up for it.

Not so. If they tried blatant price dumping, they would run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission and run the real risk of being broken up.

If you go back to the time when Intel only had the Prescott, AMD were so much stronger it just wasn't feasible that Intel could have put them out of business.

But since AMD scored an own goal purchasing ATI and then compounded things by losing their competitive edge, Intel are now in a position(also helped along by the World Recession) to put AMD out of business if they so choose, and most likely avoid sanction by the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.

Anyway, Phenom 2 is going to give Intel some competition in the midrange market and once the cut down phenom 2's come out (dual / tri cores) also in the budget market, but don't forget that Intel does have a ace up it's sleeve, it's the I5 and will be much cheaper than I7.

Oh I haven't forgotten, that is why I believe AMD's position is so parlous, as their roadmap shows they have nothing to compete effectively against it, and then there is the prospect of 32nm Westmere in 2010.

That could mean that for all of 2010, AMD's competitive position against Intel is actually worse than at ANY time in the last 2.5years and we have already seen the devastation that Intel wreaked upon them with Conroe against the K8.

[Hornet331]

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/h...itt_einleitung

german review, but they have min fps in there game tests.

[Miss Banana]

It is in a way worrisome that AMD will have to last quite a long time with this architecture, but AMD has a few benefits when compared to intel.

1. Intel allready went ddr3, AMD still has to. This will give a performance increase.

2. This is AMD's first 45nm chip, while intel has more experience in this area. The high overclocks for denebs, the relatively high starting frequencies compared to quad core intel starting frquencies, and the excellent power consumption all point towards the same. AMD will end up with higher stock clocks than intel. (phenom II vs I7)

Let's hope that with higher clocks and proces improvements + ddr3, AMD will be able to stay competative untill they have their next big thing ready.

[MAS]

look at vcore mmm...

[Chad Boga]

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/h...itt_einleitung

german review, but they have min fps in there game tests.

But look at the video card the fools use

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+, 55 nm, 512 MB GDDR3, Engineering Sample

[Hornet331]

2. This is AMD's first 45nm chip, while intel has more experience in this area. The high overclocks for denebs, the relatively high starting frequencies compared to quad core intel starting frquencies, and the excellent power consumption all point towards the same. AMD will end up with higher stock clocks than intel. (phenom II vs I7)

Well if it goes for rendering, you need a 5ghz P2 to score the same as a 3,6ghz Ci7 with HT in CB10.

Or a 3,6ghz P2 to beat a stock Ci7 2,66 (scalled). In multithreaded apps ci7 is just brutal, thanx to HT.
AMD needs some serious increase in stock clocks if they what to stay competetive with Ci5 in H209.

[v_rr]

AMD needs some serious increase in stock clocks if they what to stay competetive with Ci5 in H209.

Some Ph2 at 3.2-3.4 Ghz?
Or bring the 6-core Opteron to Desktop?

[[XC] riptide]

Some Ph2 at 3.2-3.4 Ghz?
Or bring the 6-core Opteron to Desktop?

How about a 3.4Ghz Stock 6 core Opteron... on desktop.

[Slay0r]

look at vcore mmm...

The one shown in that CPU-Z pic is core VID aka nominal voltage, not Vcore aka actual voltage.

[Macadamia]

How about a 3.4Ghz Stock 6 core Opteron... on desktop.

I'm very impressed by the initial power @ load numbers. This makes Istanbul far more interesting than we thought.

If AMD doesn't screw up power load of Istanbul < 1.5x "PC" of Deneb since cache isn't growing at all, and TDP never scales linearly vs cores.

Does that mean a 125W six-core @ 3Ghz that uses <100W in real life loads, pops up?
Server (2Ghz -> 2.8Ghz) seems to be saved because of this, but desktop might not like it so much.

OTOH AMD will probably earn more money with the Athlon X4 quads for OEM, compared to the total of Phenom I.

Somethings makes me think, especially when one of the post involved macci, thats those chips were incredibly cherry picked.

It doesnt help the second event was sponsored by amd

And you whine when we rag on [T]OCP.

[Leeghoofd]

Just watch stable overclock reached by reviewer with i7 and end users overclocks

Well I can trust Sky (Hardwarecanucks), he's always been very objective and either he got a bad sample like he's suspecting or things don't taste as creamy as presented

Secondly these motherboards should have matured pretty well, compared to the I7 ones with the X58 chipset... if you only have one bios to try not much you can do...

you always find strange comments, the real strange part is how reviewers actually OC, in core2 times you see oc's with the best air coolers like ultra120 extreme, its already known phenom2 needs cool down to clock higher. Now they test on stock cooler. Where are the NB oc's????

With strange comments I mean big errors in the reviews : inversed diagrams, wrong conclusions (maybe due to the inversed diagrams), running tests on a 4870 512 with 16xx res and concluding the Phenom keeps pace with Intels flagship in all the games : for me the vidcard bottlenecks as every cpu in the test is at the same pace, and so on...

I hope Hardwarecanucks and madshrimps as websites can bring out some nicer results then what I see today or even the end users... Be aware that many were eagerly awaiting these results and when reading this will have the same initial feeling that I'm having right now... I hope for AMD all them review sites got it wrong

I saw some True's, Noctua's and OCZ vendetta coolers in the reviews and ofcourse they had the better results then just 3.6-3.8Ghz stable

We'll have to wait untill the extreme overclockers take these processors for a spin, I guess. There weren't that much Phenom I clockers to begin with, so I reckon a lot of people have to get used to the technology first.

Hope you get one of these soon man. Plus I got a True with 1366 socket ( dual fan ready) waiting for you sir PJ after the weekend

[Hornet331]

How about a 3.4Ghz Stock 6 core Opteron... on desktop.

I wouldn't mind that.

[Chad Boga]

How about a 3.4Ghz Stock 6 core Opteron... on desktop.

When will 6 core from AMD be available? What does their roadmap suggest?

[Shintai]

When will 6 core from AMD be available? What does their roadmap suggest?

Late 2009. Servers only and most likely very expensive.

[Chad Boga]

Late 2009. Servers only and most likely very expensive.

Just in time to run into 32nm Westmere.

[Slay0r]

Late 2009. Servers only and most likely very expensive.

Are you suggesting that in the past there has been a brand new architecture server processor which was cheap?

[Drwho?]

Great, so, they can get close to the Core 2 Quad Q9400, with the top end of their CPUs, that means they are about one generation and half behind, the gap is still increasing ...
(Q9400 is in the middle of the Core 2 Quad selection)
I would not call that a success if I was the Green performance guy.
The best way to help them is to stay honnest about it, just my 2 cents. (Remember the Pentium 4 time frame, it takes to understand your problem to fix it, I learned this)

[AbelJemka]

Great, so, they can get close to the Core 2 Quad Q9400, with the top end of their CPUs, that means they are about one generation and half behind, the gap is still increasing ...
(Q9400 is in the middle of the Core 2 Quad selection)
I would not call that a success if I was the Green performance guy.
The best way to help them is to stay honnest about it, just my 2 cents. (Remember the Pentium 4 time frame, it takes to understand your problem to fix it, I learned this)

Which Quad sells the best, that's the real question?
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sho...px?i=3492&p=20

Compared to the Core 2 Quad Q9400, the Phenom II X4 940 is clearly the better pick. While it's not faster across the board, more often than not the 940 is equal to or faster than the Q9400. If Intel can drop the price of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 to the same price as the Phenom II X4 940 then the recommendation goes back to Intel.

I wait Intel price cut to buy Drwho?! Make us happy

[Hornet331]

I wait Intel price cut to buy Drwho?! Make us happy

read the review you have linked carefully, then you find your answer *cough* page 4 *cough*.

[Chad Boga]

it is good enough, for 90% of the people out there even a single core chip is enough

Then why did the K8 do so well against the P4? At the time, what you have said applies about the PhII now, applied to the P4 in its day too.

[inCore]

Yay for price cuts. It's also a lot more lucrative to buy a Q9550 when one already has a Intel based system, even if AMD CPUs are the same price there is no way that I am ever selling my motherboard to get an AMD CPU.