Phenom II Review Summaries.....

[EniGmA1987]

I will hopefully write you all a short review of my own personal experience from an average user standpoint of an average pII 940. I have some G.Skill Pi series RAM (2GB sticks), and also some 1GB sticks of Mushkin that I will try out with it. And the CPU will be in an Asus M3A79-T motherboard with the 790FX and SB750 combo. So it is technically a dragon platform, but still has the 790FX chip.

I will run SuperPi, 3dMark 05 and 06, a RAR extraction test, and a video encoding test.

I only have 1 CPU to bench it against, so I will be using both my new pII, and an older Opteron 12010HE overclocked to 3GHz. I will also test the pII at its highest stable overclock against the Opteron at 3.1GHz to see what the difference is at the higher clock speed.

[fizur2002]

I will hopefully write you all a short review of my own personal experience from an average user standpoint of an average pII 940. I have some G.Skill Pi series RAM (2GB sticks), and also some 1GB sticks of Mushkin that I will try out with it. And the CPU will be in an Asus M3A79-T motherboard with the 790FX and SB750 combo. So it is technically a dragon platform, but still has the 790FX chip.

I will run SuperPi, 3dMark 05 and 06, a RAR extraction test, and a video encoding test.

I only have 1 CPU to bench it against, so I will be using both my new pII, and an older Opteron 12010HE overclocked to 3GHz. I will also test the pII at its highest stable overclock against the Opteron at 3.1GHz to see what the difference is at the higher clock speed.

this is the kind of stuff i like to see, more "real world scenario" benchmarks and comparisons.

[Caveman787]

So gx boards are better for overclocking now?

I thought because some fx boards had 8+2 phase they were better for overclocking....I'm confused.

I was also confused at why the gx motherboards were cheaper with built in graphics....but if they can shrink those why not shrink the fx line?

[nanohead]

So gx boards are better for overclocking now?

I thought because some fx boards had 8+2 phase they were better for overclocking....I'm confused.

I was also confused at why the gx motherboards were cheaper with built in graphics....but if they can shrink those why not shrink the fx line?

It is indeed a mess. The marketing folks have run amok, and now even the faithful are confused.

The FX chip was designed for "greater" overall versatility because it has more PCIe capacity. The GX is an enhanced 780G chip with more PCIe capacity, but still not as much as the FX.

It would appear that the chipset guys at AMD/ATI realized that maybe the FX was overkill and lost interest in it and turned to the GX instead. There is also the question of whether so many people have been laid off at AMD, that the folks who had this whole thing sorted out are all gone, so the thing is sort of on autopilot.

Pricing is a random activity. The chips don't really cost any more or less to produce if they have graphics on them or not.... gates are basically free at this point so you can jamb as much stuff as you can fit on the die, and it will basically cost almost the same amount to produce, so retail pricing is "made up" based on how you're trying to position things.

The motherboard guys then take the raw chips, and produce the final product based on what THEIR marketing people believe to be true, which may or may not be the same as the AMD people.

Whats worse is, the initial Phenom cycle was a financial debacle for many of the faithful motherboard manufacturers that had made money with AMD previously. Gigabyte alone put out a TON of different AMD "spider" boards, plus Asus and all the rest, just to have the processor story go down in serious flames, which caused sales of the "Spider" motherboards to be extremely soft.

Then, when the B3 comes out, it barely helps. They are working on the mysterious SB750, and decide to release it along with the reworked 780G, and they call it a 790GX, which further confuses everyone cuz its NOT part of the 790 family at all. Then only DFI, Asus and Foxconn do a 790FX/SB750 board, and even those don't do that well.

Now, with everyone laid off, and short attention spans raging, the 790GX is the new best thing.

In reality, most of this stuff is all the same. How the Mobo manufacturers develop and refine their respective BIOS and power their boards has become the real battle ground.

AMD has returned to the Value play, while Intel, after 4 or so terrible years as the also ran, now is the performance play.

I'd say that an adequately powered 790GX board would perform much the same as an adequately powered 790FX board, assuming both use the SB750. Indeed, my own personal experiences have born that out. I have seriously spent WAYYYY to much money on my Asus M3A79-T (790FX) rig, and just hacked together an Asus M3A78-T (790GX) machine, and they both perform quite well. The 78-T actually feels faster, while the 79-T performs great in games and benchmarks.

All in all, I could use any of these parts for anything and probably be perfectly happy. If you are prosperous enough to buy twin 4870X2 cards, then the FX will probably be a better bet for full PCIe crossfire communications with the 4 GPU cores. But otherwise, it probably makes very little difference.


That was a ridiculously long answer to a simple question

[Halk]

Pricing is a random activity. The chips don't really cost any more or less to produce if they have graphics on them or not.... gates are basically free at this point so you can jamb as much stuff as you can fit on the die, and it will basically cost almost the same amount to produce, so retail pricing is "made up" based on how you're trying to position things.

That was a ridiculously long answer to a simple question

Might have been long, but it was an interesting read.

Sadly I think there's a ring of truth to it. We all know that R&D has to be paid for somehow, so it gets lumped onto the highest end stuff, especially at launch.

For all we know the GX is just a shrunk FX with integrated graphics and a couple of 'bonus' features disabled.