Phenom II X4 Reviewed

[btarunr]

With the official launch of the AMD Dragon platform, AMD lifed whatever NDA restrictions it had over the media to publish reviews of its Phenom II X4 processor, letting proper and final reviews make to the internet. Several tech-enthusiast websites have taken the opportunity. Reviewers put the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition to test.

The Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition is AMD's flagship desktop CPU. With four processing cores clocked at 3.00 GHz, it embeds 2 MB L2 and 6 MB of L3 cache. Based on the AM2+ socket, it supports the DDR2-1066 standard. This processor is especially overclocker friendly with its unlocked FSB multiplier and the overall positive response from the reviewers on its overclocking headroom. Here are some of the reviews at:

bit-tech | Elite Bastards | ExtremeTech | [H] Enthusiast | Hexus | HotHardware | NeoSeeker | TechReport | TweakTown | The Guru of 3D | Tom's Hardware

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[DaJMasta]

Ouch.



I want to say let's see what AMD can bring to the table next, but this is a launch.



They're a generation behind in processors now, which is too bad. ATI really was a great acquisition for them it seems.

 

[AlCabone]

at least the power consumption is fairly good.

 

[DaJMasta]

125W? That's not exactly stellar though it's much better than the higher power 65nm phenoms of before.

 

[JC316]

Not bad at all. Keeping up with Yorkie quads at a much lower price point. I may make the switch back now.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

Not bad at all. Keeping up with Yorkie quads at a much lower price point. I may make the switch back now.

no dont, p2 is crap, its not faster then i7, and if its not faster then intels newist, best and most over priced, its not worth buying!!!!

 

[Homeless]

hardocp's review is pretty harsh, but I suppose that's expected as the numbers speak for themselves

 

[DRDNA]

Hmmm... heading in the right direction ...i guess.

I have always favored AMD up to when Intel made the C2D.....Then I was very upset with my FX57 because I was a looser to C2D in just about every thing...OCing and benching were no longer competitive against the Magic C2D that were a fraction of the price...I paid friggin $1057 for that FX57
So what does any logical overclocker and Bencher do? Well I made the switch to Intel and just recently too...I still hope that AMD regains the crown one day but till then I will stick with Intel

 

[ThorAxe]

hardocp's review is pretty harsh, but I suppose that's expected as the numbers speak for themselves

I agree, the gaming numbers are damning. Heck it's going to be a fair bit slower than my old Q6600 at the same clock speed.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

hardocp's review is pretty harsh, but I suppose that's expected as the numbers speak for themselves

typical Hard responce, lets take a sub 300usd chip and pit it against a chip that costs $1400.00(yes thats 1400usd)
QX9770 $1400
vs
chips that are gonna retail for under 300bucks each........

why not drag race a geo metro vs a tricked out GTO or something?

I lost all respect for Hard long ago when i watched mass bannings over reports of problems with the 8800gt's(that later where confirmed)

they are below toms on my list of sites i trust, and toms is just about the level of reading tp somebody already made use of( since tom sold it, its trash)

 

[DRDNA]

The i7 920 is below $300 and as low as $230....seems like a straight forward non bias review to me.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

funny, even their own forums are questioning why their numbers are so diffrent from other sites like guru3d and techreport.

also the hard review 2gb ram on phenom2, 4 on qx9770, and 6 on the i7, yeah that dosnt have any effect.

they also dont test gaged and ungaged...........typical hard bullshit if you ask me

 

[ThorAxe]

also the hard review 2gb ram on phenom2, 4 on qx9770, and 6 on the i7, yeah that dosnt have any effect.

It's odd about the differing ram sizes, I can understand it for the Core i7 but not for the QX9770. Still I doubt that it would have had much impact on the Tri-SLI test.

I was hoping for something better from AMD...the wait continues...

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

i can tell you, many games today DO bennifit from a system having 4gb avalable, by not keeping it as close to even as possable they made their own results invalid, u know they could all have had 6gb, its easy, 2x2gb kit+2x1gb kit=6gb for the c2q and p2.

Dont get me wrong, im not saying the p2 is the best chip but in its price range, its not as bad as their review shows, the other reviews are more even from what i can see, they kept the playing field more level.

hope to see somebody here and at pcper do a good review of the p2 chips showing how running memory gaged and ungaged can effect results, as well as how other perf tweaks can effect perf, i trust TPU and PcPer(ryan is a good guy) more then i will ever trust the likes of kyle over at [H], hes a disshonest asskiss who uses his site and possition to get free hardware and get into beta testing hardware for companys like nvidia, if scewing the results of a few benches this way or that can keep him in the big boys(intel/nvidia's) good graces and keep the hardware flowing, damn strait hes gonna do it.

hell hes banned company reps for not telling him who they where b4 they started posting, I have had 2 reps from popular videocard makers tell me they got banned for not devulging who they where b4 they started posting(both posted to try and help with user issues with their products, aka to offer good support) one of them had him offer to unbann if he was willing to give H a couple free cards for benching....ROFL......lovely.

sorry cant post the company or rep names in public, promised not to, dont want to get them in trouble, connections go a long way when ur rmaing cards for urself or helping friends/clients get RMA's taken care of

 

[Tatty_Two]

Not bad at all. Keeping up with Yorkie quads at a much lower price point. I may make the switch back now.

Really? The 2 reviews I read from above suggested that these remained slower in performance than Yorkfield and were "estimated" to have a release price equating to I7, if that is true they are a more costly lesser performing alternative to Yorkfield let alone I7.....maybe I read them wrong IDK?

Hopefully the 790GX motherboards will be considerably cheaper than X58 though.

 

[ThorAxe]

i can tell you, many games today DO bennifit from a system having 4gb avalable, by not keeping it as close to even as possable they made their own results invalid, u know they could all have had 6gb, its easy, 2x2gb kit+2x1gb kit=6gb for the c2q and p2.

I am not disagreeing with you on that, especially in Vista.

PCPer and The Tech Report are two of my favourite sites, I love their podcasts.

I did see a response from Kyle Bennett:

Yes, they have different amounts of RAM. NONE of our test are dependent on RAM volumes and never come close to getting into a cacheing situation. I thought about ramping the Phenom II up to 4GB, but it would have likely made it a bit slower in the scoring. I used 4GB in the C2 system because that is the same stick we have standardized testing on all the i7 systems. The Corsair 1600 DDR3. Had we gone with 2GB in the Core 2 we would have likely gotten a bit faster scores, at least that has been my experience.

The one thing that concerned me, that I bought up in the review, but did not go into detail on, is the ability or lack there of, of the Phenom II and 1066 DDR2 speeds. I have not had any trouble with K8 or Phenom and 1066 memory. I could not get the Phenom II systems to do . Not sure if it was Phenom II or the board, but I have done 1066 on that board before with the same RAM and Phenom.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

I am not disagreeing with you on that, especially in Vista.

PCPer and The Tech Report are two of my favourite sites, I love their podcasts.

I did see a response from Kyle Bennett:

Yes, they have different amounts of RAM. NONE of our test are dependent on RAM volumes and never come close to getting into a cacheing situation. I thought about ramping the Phenom II up to 4GB, but it would have likely made it a bit slower in the scoring. I used 4GB in the C2 system because that is the same stick we have standardized testing on all the i7 systems. The Corsair 1600 DDR3. Had we gone with 2GB in the Core 2 we would have likely gotten a bit faster scores, at least that has been my experience.

The one thing that concerned me, that I bought up in the review, but did not go into detail on, is the ability or lack there of, of the Phenom II and 1066 DDR2 speeds. I have not had any trouble with K8 or Phenom and 1066 memory. I could not get the Phenom II systems to do . Not sure if it was Phenom II or the board, but I have done 1066 on that board before with the same RAM and Phenom.

well, i can tell you, i have tested x2's and phemon's in vista, 4gb is a must for a serious gamer, you will only see a perf drop IF THE MEMORY TIMINGS ARE WORSE, compair say a gskill PI 800 4-4-4-12 kit to another companys 800 4-4-4-12 kit thats 2x1gb, see what the perf diff is in memory benches, then bench some real games(crysis for example where it CAN use MORE RAM!!!)

again kyle makes up excuses to explain why he did stuff to hamper the compeditor that didnt pay him....

i would expect some results out of pcper soon as well as rebels haven forums, alot of 790gx board owners over there are gonna have these chips as soon as their grubby hands can get ahold of them

 

[Icewind31]

also you can't just compare the chip's cost, personally I look at it from a platform perspective, as I already have a 790GX board, it'll only cost me the price of the processor, but if I wanted to go I7, that means x58 board (not cheap), DDR3 (not cheap). If someone already has an AM2+ system this is a non brainer in the $ department. I can't make the same arguement for a brand new build however.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

also you can't just compare the chip's cost, personally I look at it from a platform perspective, as I already have a 790GX board, it'll only cost me the price of the processor, but if I wanted to go I7, that means x58 board (not cheap), DDR3 (not cheap). If someone already has an AM2+ system this is a non brainer in the $ department. I can't make the same arguement for a brand new build however.

for most users moving to i7 would mean dumping their already good/working ddr2, buying ddr3(not cheap for good tri chan kits) an x58 board and cpu as you said already, but also buying a new cooler that supports i7.

for anybody with am2 or am2+ the upgrades easyer.

am2, replace board(if it dosnt have a bios update) and cpu, a cheap prospect compared to intel even for a kickass clocking bord.

am2+, bios update most times, if not avalable replace board same as above.

tho i have seen a few reports of boards that DONT have bios updates just seeing the phenom2's as phenom's..........so you may not need an updated bios to run a p2 in a current am2 board(good job amd!!!)

 

[ThorAxe]

well, i can tell you, i have tested x2's and phemon's in vista, 4gb is a must for a serious gamer, you will only see a perf drop IF THE MEMORY TIMINGS ARE WORSE, compair say a gskill PI 800 4-4-4-12 kit to another companys 800 4-4-4-12 kit thats 2x1gb, see what the perf diff is in memory benches, then bench some real games(crysis for example where it CAN use MORE RAM!!!)

I have tested Crysis with 2GB, 4GB and 6GB on my Q6600 and E6750 and I found little to no difference.

I think the main point here is that the games tested in the [H] don't need that much ram.

My ram is running at 5-4-4-18 1088MHz. I have found that Crysis responds better to higher MHz than tight timings. I have tested this theory with the same ram at 733MHz 3-3-3-5. However this was on a 680i platform.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Also, please keep in mind that the i7 920 is boosting 2-300 Mhz (if not more) from turbo mode.
(almost none mentioned it)

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

yeah, you also gotta remmber amd and intel react diffrently to clocks vs timings and balancing them.
amd chips like lower latancys, IF you can up the clocks and keep latancys down, your gonna get the best from both, but if the ram just cant take the clocks but can deal with decent clocks at good latancys amd will be FINE.

also the phenom chips have gaged and ungaged mode, as well as other memory tweaks that effect diffrent games/apps diffrently, seen results where some apps run drastickly better in one mode then the other, in one case it was 2 games they said it may acctualy be worth rebooting and changing that setting to gain the perf.

just a question, was your test on vista or xp? and was it x64?

just wana know, I feel that kyle's excuses are just that, excuses, a true 1:1 bench would try and balance EVERYTHING, and he dosnt even pretend to bother.

for example he states that any intel quad will do 3.2( i have seen a few that we couldnt quite get to full 3.2) and also seen weird results from memory deviders when overclocking causing WEIRD perf effects, some cases droping fsb a small ammount and chainging the devider gives better perf then higher cpu clock with slitly lower ram clock OR in a WEIRD instance, lower ram clock (about 40mhz) was faster........cant explain it but its best to bench like priced platforms if you ask me.

 

[TheGuruStud]

I swear, where did these people learn to overclock LOL.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I read Tom's review and I have to say the PII isnt that bad. Based off of this review the PII is about 10% faster in the same price range as its Intel competition. Plus it has a better price/watt performance. Honestly I was expecting more out of the PII but on the same hand I'm not surprised. I guess I wont sell my stocks just yet

After all my current build is going to be AMD............whenever I finish

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

I swear, where did these people learn to overclock LOL.

yeah, like watching my buddy try and overclock his phenom BE by upping the fsb(hes an intel user LOL) it made it 15mhz b4 it started erroring, he insisted it was the chips fault.....

after a little weaking i got it to 3.2 stable for him, he still dosnt understand how, he could overclock p4/p-d but that was about it hehe.

some systmes act very odd with overclocking, chipsets/bios, can be VERY weird things that happen

something i found with g2 chips, i gotta up the fsb 2 at a time or it falls into recovery mode, with the f3 or f2 chips 1mhz works fine