Phenom II Review Summaries.....

[chew*]

yea i know the gx is 55nm but still i believe the fx boards have better quality. and according to SOF phenom II and ACC is pointless because it does nothing.

The only advantage FX boards have over gx is 6 layer PCB and a larger power scheme which could be contributed to the higher tdp of both the chipset and phenom 1.

Boards that you thought were buggy and problematic with phenom 1 might be rare diamonds in the ruff with phenom 2 etc possibly the jigabyte gx board

I'd be really interested to hear peoples thoughts and impressions of the gigabyte GX board once they drop a PH II in it.

[Klarko]

PhII is pretty much what the original phenom should have been...

[Mav451]

PhII is pretty much what the original phenom should have been...

It may well have been - remember they had to scrap the design and everything one year into it. Basically -1 year right off the bat.

Course back then it had the cooler name of K8L.

[roofsniper]

PhII is pretty much what the original phenom should have been...

thats what i have been saying. a year ago i was saying phenom I is pretty much a prototype. the real one isn't ready yet. because of the whole barcelona delay and everything amd kicked their own ass with k10. if they get their act together their with their next core design then its questionable who would be the performance leader amd or intel.

lol i bet i get flamed for this.

[fizur2002]

so what are you guys thinking now, does it look like the GX boards are going to be the better ones to go with as long as the IGP is turned off for heat issues?

[ZL1Killa]

well i'm going to be jumping from a 6400+ BE X2 to a Phenom II 940 X4, anyone interested in BASE Superpi or other comparisons?? if you tell me what to do I will sure as hell do it for ya if anyone is interested, if it is in my powa.

[Mats]

It may well have been - remember they had to scrap the design and everything one year into it. Basically -1 year right off the bat.

Course back then it had the cooler name of K8L.

What happened? Any links? I don't remember . .

Wasn't K8L a mobile design?

[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.

[EniGmA1987]

Well synthetic bencharks are hardly "real world" :P But ya I get what you mean. No cherry picking for me, just your average hardware off the egg. I will try running CoD4 and AoC for some testing as well. That is more real world examples of gaming performance.

[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?

[equinox1]

lets wait a bit for real testers to get there phenomII. i laughed at most of the initial reviews because of how they were testing. in my opinion the 790fx boards are going to come to the forefront once we all have our cpu's.
i have the foxconn a79a-s and the dfi m2r and if acc is trully meaningless then i think the dfi is going to be superior in all aspects. i was amazed with hardocp's review the most. kyle could not even get 1066 ram to work so he tested with ram at 800 while all the intels were at 1066 or higher.

[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

[Raiderman]

I dont care if you can turn off the IGP or not, I dont want it on my motherboard period. Took me forever to finally accept onboard sound.
I

[chew*]

I welcome it, another shot at a WR, looking forward to putting a DI/LN2 pot on the NB

[G0ldBr1ck]

If there is no use for ACC then there should be no problems with SB600 boards aside from the Raid controller

[Halk]

If there is no use for ACC then there should be no problems with SB600 boards aside from the Raid controller

I've not heard that though.

I've seen that good clocks are possible -without- ACC. However if ACC allowed the Phenom I to go higher with the magic tweaks then logic says Phenom II should benefit too (although to what level is unknown). However I remember reading somewhere that ACC doesn't work on Phenom II yet, and as the new AMD Overdrive has not been released yet (unless it's in beta) then it's possible Phenoms have some sort of ACC already built in.

Another thing is the independent clocking business. As I understand AMD OD allows different clock levels on different cores. To me that suggests that I may have 2 cores that can hit 4K, a core that can do 3.8K and a core that can do 4.3K. I'd want to make if I'm playing a game that can only use a single core that nothing goes on the 4.3K core other than that game. I've no idea if SB750 is needed for independent clock setting. Nor do I know if it works like I imagine it. I'm just chattering away here :P

[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.

[G0ldBr1ck]

I've not heard that though.

I've seen that good clocks are possible -without- ACC. However if ACC allowed the Phenom I to go higher with the magic tweaks then logic says Phenom II should benefit too (although to what level is unknown). However I remember reading somewhere that ACC doesn't work on Phenom II yet, and as the new AMD Overdrive has not been released yet (unless it's in beta) then it's possible Phenoms have some sort of ACC already built in.

Another thing is the independent clocking business. As I understand AMD OD allows different clock levels on different cores. To me that suggests that I may have 2 cores that can hit 4K, a core that can do 3.8K and a core that can do 4.3K. I'd want to make if I'm playing a game that can only use a single core that nothing goes on the 4.3K core other than that game. I've no idea if SB750 is needed for independent clock setting. Nor do I know if it works like I imagine it. I'm just chattering away here :P

The phenom 1 can clock all cores seperatly with all chipsets. Or am I miss understanding what your saying?

[EvilBlitz]

Don't see why people are complaining about the GX so much. At stock it makes jack and difference.
Its as expected, almost as fast as a Penryn, close enough that in most cases you couldn't tell with the naked eye.
So AMD wins on bang for buck. BUT the big problem is, is that the Penryn die is smaller than the Deneb die, so intel can afford to undercut Phenom 2 if they want.
On a side note, ffs AMD really needs to bloody lift their cache density. I hope they aren't reusing the the same cells from 65nm for the 6 core designs too :/

nanohead, the chips only cost the same to produce if they are pad limited afaik. If they aren't then it is definitely a savings to make a NB without integrated.

Curious about independent clocking of cores too, Anandtech said that AMD has locked all the cores(i.e they must all drop in speed, not just 1,2, or 3) for CnQ for Phenom 2. I dont know if you can set them at different speeds outside that? Has someone tested this already?

[menace2society]

I own three AMD systems and a high end AMD graphics card, but truth be told, AMD's processors are not that competitive clock for clock. If you through out price it makes no sense to buy one. As a consumer I want AMD to prosper,it's do to the success of the athlon 64 that we enjoy the prices of cpu's that we have now. With that said, the last 2 cpu's released from Intel have out preformed the last 2 cpu's released from AMD, and no matter how you word it that fact remains


Just my opinion: Menace

[iandh]

I dont care if you can turn off the IGP or not, I dont want it on my motherboard period. Took me forever to finally accept onboard sound.
I

I actually prefer it... it doesn't get in my way when it is turned off, and I can use it to play source games when I am in between video cards.

I own three AMD systems and a high end AMD graphics card, but truth be told, AMD's processors are not that competitive clock for clock. If you through out price it makes no sense to buy one. As a consumer I want AMD to prosper,it's do to the success of the athlon 64 that we enjoy the prices of cpu's that we have now. With that said, the last 2 cpu's released from Intel have out preformed the last 2 cpu's released from AMD, and no matter how you word it that fact remains


Just my opinion: Menace

If you throw out price? Why would you do that?

It is one of the only two things that matters (three if you count quality) when making a purchase.

It makes quite a bit of sense to buy one... the more of us support AMD, the lower the hardware prices will be overall. Not to mention which, they offer very good value, which matters quite a bit in this economy, even to those with plenty of money to burn. They may be burning it now but soon it may be worth less than firewood...

[iandh]

double post

[Glow9]

probly because they care nothing about selling 790FX anymore but have invested allot into 790GX so would have done them no good to use FX to show off the platform.

Or because most people choose to buy a 4870x2 over 2 4870s so the demand for the 790FX is not in as high demand especially since it has a higher cost and bigger hotter chip.

I'd like to see more reviews with the 780a

[tbone8ty]

aaaaaaaaand back on topic we have.....

toms hardware is also good

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...40,2114-8.html

i like the energy efficiency :-)