# AMD Phenom II v. Intel Core i7



## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

I'm considering my options for upgrading and I'm not ready to settle on $700 for a Core i7 platform just yet.  Here are my questions:

a) Is Phenom II expected to be equivilent or superior to Core i7?
b) Are Core i7 prices expected to come down significantly at Phenom II's launch?
c) When is NVIDIA planning to release a Core i7 compatible chipset?
d) When is Intel planning to release mainstream chipsets for Core i7?
e) When are non-9## series Core i7 processors expected?
f) Will Phenom II work in already released AM2+ motherboards?
g) Is Phenom II expected to be DDR3-only like the Core i7?
h) Core i7 is Hyper-Threaded while Phenom II is not; how much will that hurt Phenom II's multithreaded performance (eight threads compared to four)?
i) Is Phenom II tri-channel or dual-channel memory?

I'm trying to establish what is the best to buy and when is the best time to buy it.  I'm not looking any farther than Q1 2009.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

a: phenomII is going to be behind i7
d&e: 2nd half of 09
g: The AM3 versions will be ddr3
h: phenom will feel the burn in highly multithreaded apps (that and mem latency are the biggest gains on i7 over previous arch)
i: iirc dual


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## dazed554 (Dec 10, 2008)

F) I believe that the first Phenom II processors will be AM2+ and later ones will be AM3, both of which should work in many current AM2+ boards


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## trickson (Dec 10, 2008)

As I see it this is all just speculation . Really how can we know any thing ? there are no Phenom II's out as of yet . What they say and what they will do are going to be 2 different things as we seen with the Phenom ! However with the i7 out and about it would seem that the Phenom II has a long hard road to climb . The i7 can oc like mad has a better memory controller and is tested , I do not think that speculating about how fast the Phenom II will be is going to do any good at all when you know just how fast the i7 is now how can you compare it to some thing that is not out yet ?


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

trickson said:


> As I see it this is all just speculation . Really how can we know any thing ? there are no Phenom II's out as of yet . What they say and what they will do are going to be 2 different things as we seen with the Phenom ! However with the i7 out and about it would seem that the Phenom II has a long hard road to climb . The i7 can oc like mad has a better memory controller and is tested , I do not think that speculating about how fast the Phenom II will be is going to do any good at all when you know just how fast the i7 is now how can you compare it to some thing that is not out yet ?




They have been benched the 940 Phenom is like a Q9550


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

I read that Phenom II is supposed to be in retail channels in early February.  Is Intel expected to respond with a price reduction on the 9## series processors or is that not likely?

So basically, the time to buy is in Q2 '09?




[I.R.A]_FBi said:


> They have been benched the 940 Phenom is like a Q9550


Wow, in that case, it's not even worth looking at AMD which means the only time Intel's prices could come down is with the launch of other processors but, even that is unlikely.  So there is a very good chance that the 9## series Core i7 processor pricing won't change much until Q3 '09 or later?


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## farlex85 (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I'm considering my options for upgrading and I'm not ready to settle on $700 for a Core i7 platform just yet.  Here are my questions:
> 
> a) Is Phenom II expected to be equivilent or superior to Core i7?
> b) Are Core i7 prices expected to come down significantly at Phenom II's launch?
> ...



a) From early speculative numbers it will compete w/ the year old yorkies, not i7
b) Probably not, the q9xxx series will probably see the biggest drops, although at speculative prices of the PII they won't drop much probably
c) I don't think they are, x58 handles sli and xfire, I don't think nvidia will release a chipset, and even if they do, I wouldn't think they would be very good unless they are priced extremely well
d) I would imagine shortly after PII takes off, as it will offer more competition
e) see above
f) the first round will, the next will be AM3 w/ ddr3
g) the second round is
h) it will be a significant difference in apps that can use that many threads, however the majority of apps won't, at least for a bit
i) good question, I think double, haven't heard anything about triple

It's all still speculative as we really haven't heard anything substantial about Phenom IIs performance. However, the few number we have seen seem rather disappointing to me, it seems that they are just now competing w/ yorkfields, which won't really do anything drastic to the market, perhaps lower prices on those procs a tad. That would be about on par w/ current trends though w/ AMD being 6-12 months behind intel. 

I would wait regardless, might as well see what comes out and it's effect on prices before leaping to something new. It seems to me for mainstream it's really advantageous at this point to go w/ PII if you have an AM2 board, or for me probably up to a q9xxx when they are dropped if you have an intel board. If your going for a whole new set-up, perhaps wait to see what numbers AM3 puts up as well as i5 (mainstream nehalem) before upgrading, as they will both require new boards w/ ddr3 memory.

That's my 2 cents


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## trickson (Dec 10, 2008)

[I.R.A]_FBi said:


> They have been benched the 940 Phenom is like a Q9550



They have been benched ? Well no one I know has benched one . No one I know even has one . So this is to me just speculation as to how well they will perform . I like to play the wait and see game myself .


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## spearman914 (Dec 10, 2008)

trickson said:


> They have been benched ? Well no one I know has benched one . No one I know even has one . So this is to me just speculation as to how well they will perform . I like to play the wait and see game myself .



It has been benched. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=78410 http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,669910/News/AMD_Phenom_II_X4_940-_First_game_benchmarks/


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> It has been benched. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1098392#post1098392



Thank you spearman


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## trickson (Dec 10, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> It has been benched. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1098392#post1098392



Like I said to speculative for me .


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## farlex85 (Dec 10, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> It has been benched. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1098392#post1098392



Keep in mind of course that's a couple games (which isn't really a very good test of a cpu's power unless they were running w/o a gpu) and we don't really know much about their test, nor do we really know the source. Another speculative bench put it around the q9400. Very speculative imo, but seems about right, but we will have to wait for a bit to really get a good idea.


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

farlex85 said:


> c) I don't think they are, x58 handles sli and xfire, I don't think nvidia will release a chipset, and even if they do, I wouldn't think they would be very good unless they are priced extremely well


That's truly sad.  NVIDIA mainstream boards were always much cheaper and feature packed than their Intel counterparts.  It's a shame they're leaving the market. 




farlex85 said:


> I would wait regardless, might as well see what comes out and it's effect on prices before leaping to something new. It seems to me for mainstream it's really advantageous at this point to go w/ PII if you have an AM2 board, or for me probably up to a q9xxx when they are dropped if you have an intel board. If your going for a whole new set-up, perhaps wait to see what numbers AM3 puts up as well as i5 (mainstream nehalem) before upgrading, as they will both require new boards w/ ddr3 memory.


I don't have an AM2/AM2+ board.  I asked because I wanted to know if the Phenom II boards would be a blatant rip off like LGA 1366 boards are now (I cringe at spending more than $150 on a desktop motherboard).  And because AM2+ has been around for a while now, they will be substantially cheaper but you also get a substantially slower processor too and lower memory density.

I'm leaning towards it being worth the $700 for Core i7 (3 x 2 GiB Kingston, MSI X58 mobo, Intel 920).  I mean, the 920 is priced well and $160 for 6 GiB RAM isn't all that terrible either.  It's the motherboard price that's holding me back.  I mean, I will never use Crossfire/SLI, I have zero USB devices, only two SATA HDDs, and the rest of the cost is just for it being state-of-the-art.  It's a mega-rip off for my needs.  I guess I'll just have to ponder it.


Edit: I should add that I game a lot but I only play at 1024x768 @ 85 Hz.  Eye candy isn't important to me so as long as the game runs, I'm happy.

Multithreaded performance is important to me because I code such software.  It would be a bonus for me to get eight threads of performance without moving everything to my server to run it.

It should be noted that I will most likely be running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition on it should I get it.  I don't feel like spending over $100 for Vista x64.


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## farlex85 (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That's truly sad.  NVIDIA mainstream boards were always much cheaper and feature packed than their Intel counterparts.  It's a shame they're leaving the market.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I would imagine AM3 will be substantially cheaper considering AMDs current trends. The X58 is actually following the tradition of the Xx8 boards that came before (the x38/x48 were also $200+ boards topping out at nearly $400 ), and yeah I know what you mean I cringe too. I'm not sure if they are going to release another line of boards for the i7s either. It seems like they may make you pay that for the upper end, and save the mid-range boards (a la p35/p45) for the i5 socket (which will be a completely different socket, you can't use the 920 for instance in a mid-range board, and you can't use an i5 in a x58 :shadedshu), which would pretty much turn me off of nehalem all together unless I could find a compelling reason for i5. I'm hoping they release some $100-200 boards for i7.

Edit: If multi-threading is of great importance to you, I would definitely go w/ i7, as I don't think anything will be able to match that multi-threading performance for some time (probably westmere, the 32nm die shrink coming next year will be the thing to top the current i7).


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

I'm not one to upgrade but, I wonder if i5 will be limited to dual physical core?  In which case, the extra cost for X58 is justified.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

4 cores as well iirc


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## farlex85 (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I'm not one to upgrade but, I wonder if i5 will be limited to dual physical core?  In which case, the extra cost for X58 is justified.



It will be both, some w/ 4 physical cores and some w/ 2 physical cores (havendale), all hyper-threaded. Of course, another compelling reason for the x58 is the prospect of the six-cores due out next year around die shrink time.

Edit: 8 core will be server I guess.


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## Binge (Dec 10, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> It has been benched. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=78410 http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,669910/News/AMD_Phenom_II_X4_940-_First_game_benchmarks/



Spearman rocks for once!   u bro


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## spearman914 (Dec 10, 2008)

Binge said:


> Spearman rocks for once!   u bro



lol!


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

What other significant differences are there between i5 and i7?  Is i7 tri-channel and i5 not?  Does i7 have QPI and i5 still rely on ye ol' NB?

I just find it kinda odd.  The 920 is already priced to take the upper/mid-range processor market.  A whole lot has to be missing from i5 to warrant them doing that.


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## farlex85 (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> What other significant differences are there between i5 and i7?  Is i7 tri-channel and i5 not?  Does i7 have QPI and i5 still rely on ye ol' NB?
> 
> I just find it kinda odd.  The 920 is already priced to take the upper/mid-range processor market.  A whole lot has to be missing from i5 to warrant them doing that.



http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78383 DMI as opposed to QPI is the main difference, double channel as well. Seems like they will be clocked lower too, and probably will have difficulty reaching the same speeds as i7.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> What other significant differences are there between i5 and i7?  Is i7 tri-channel and i5 not?  Does i7 have QPI and i5 still rely on ye ol' NB?
> 
> I just find it kinda odd.  The 920 is already priced to take the upper/mid-range processor market.  A whole lot has to be missing from i5 to warrant them doing that.



i5 =  Dual iirc ...


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

QPI obviously doesn't mean too much to me but I don't know if I'm willing to do away with tri-channel memory.  These parts need to last me about three years and the extra two sticks is a difference of 4 GiB.  Max of 8 or max of 12 GiB.  Bah.  Are the i5's coming out Q2'09?


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Dec 10, 2008)

q3


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## kid41212003 (Dec 10, 2008)

It's the biggest mistake to judge the power of the Multi-core/threads CPU with none threaded games/application.

Right now, If you test the Phenom 9750 2.4GHz vs Q6600 2.4GHz in games, there is not much different.

Beside, games DON'T need such a powerful processor like Core i7.
When your processors reach 3GHz, any higher than that will give you very very lil boost in games.

I overclocked my Core i7 920 to 3.8GHz, and when I ran the 3DMark Vantage (multi-threaded, and depend more on GPUs). I saw the FPS of the test is higher than my old score with a Phenom 9750 @ 2.7GHz -* ONLY* ~2FPS.

If you ask me, which is enough for gaming, I would say Phenom II.

If you ask me, which is more powerful, I will say Core i7 is more powerful than Phenom II. 
I don't need any benchmarks to prove the thing I just said, Phenom II need to be faster than the current Yorkfield 20%, and could reach at least 3.8GHz with air. And IT is impossible, I don't see ANY possibility for AMD to accomplish this in such a short time after the failure of Phenom I.

To test the true power of CPU, we need the tests like CPU TESTS in Vantage.
Operation per second, and physics. That will pretty much judge the true power of an CPUs.

My prediction: Core i7 will not drop price until mid Q3 next year.

And look at this ridiclulous link :
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,669910/News/AMD_Phenom_II_X4_940-_First_game_benchmarks/

Phenom I at 2.6GHz = 37.4FPS
Phenom II at 3GHz = 41.7FPS

I'm sure if they OC that Phenom I to 3GHz, the different will be under ~0.5 FPS

And I just want to remind you Clear Sky is not even support dual-core processor.


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

I don't intend to overclock anything.

Q3 '09 I think is too long for me to wait. 

I think that if I do anything, it will be in January.


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## trickson (Dec 10, 2008)

LOL . I remember this happening when Phenom was about to come out every one was look it is 50% faster than C2D ! and all this and well in the end it was a flop !


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 10, 2008)

Phenom X4 is just a quad-core update to Athlon X2.  Phenom II X4 is just a 45nm Phenom.  Phenom was a flop so I think it's fair to say Phenom II will flop too.  AMD is doomed to second place until they make significant changes (Phenom wasn't significant at all) to their architecture which isn't going to happen for a few more years (~2011).


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## francis511 (Dec 10, 2008)

Man , just as well you asked those questions here ! Every single one of those issues has been discussed on TPU in the last couplr of days. In my opinion phenoms compete with Intel on every level except overclocking. Intel chips rape amd chips on that level so stick with the blue behemoth if you`re buying a new build. Apparently Phenom 2 will oc much better than Phenom 1 but until we see a lot of statistics from all over the web , that sounds like wishful thinking.


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## niko084 (Dec 10, 2008)

Indeed $ per perf at stock clocks Intel and AMD are pretty on par with each other, maybe the Phenom II will change that maybe it will hold that, but I don't see anything coming out of their rear end that's going to dominate right now.


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## dark2099 (Dec 10, 2008)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I'm considering my options for upgrading and I'm not ready to settle on $700 for a Core i7 platform just yet.  Here are my questions:
> 
> a) Is Phenom II expected to be equivilent or superior to Core i7?Too early to tell considering Phenom II scores are test chips
> b) Are Core i7 prices expected to come down significantly at Phenom II's launch?No idea, but wouldn't be supprised.
> ...



Answers are in red.


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