AMD ’s novel Thuban hexa - core central processing unit number out swing with price that contradict their sizing . And if we ’ve learned anything from years of watching activity moving-picture show : You never , ever count out the underdog . Such is the case with recurrent underdog AMD .
bloody , beaten , and offend by months and month of Intel scrap that outpaced its parts , AMD is n’t afford up . or else , it ’s strike back with its own hexa - gist CPU and doing everything just short of yelling yippie ki - yay !
And now for the shocker : These hexa - core CPUs are affordable . Hell , one of the constituent is much budget - priced . Intel ’s luxuriously - flying hexa - effect Core i7 - 980X is $ 1,000 . Contrast that with AMD ’s novel 3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090 T at $ 295 . Want more ? The 2.8GHz Phenom II X6 1055 T costs $ 200 . Yes , $ 200 for a hexa - burden processor . So yippie kay - yay mother frakker , ineed !
Want even more good news program ? AMD ’s Modern chip will be backward compatible with the vast sea of AM3 , and even senior AM2 + , motherboards out there . We ’re quite happy to hear this , because at one point the company told us it project to jettison DDR2 funding , which would have cut off the AM2 + folks . as luck would have it , the company transfer its mind and both new chips include DDR3 and DDR2 support .
Just like with those Hollywood action movies , this story would n’t be pure without an element of suspense : Are AMD ’s Phenom II X6 processors capable of thumping Intel ’s similarly priced musculus quadriceps femoris - meat , or even its $ 1,000 wonder , the Core i7 - 980X ? To find out , you ’re going to have to read on .
What ’s the best budget chip available today for those interested in getting good functioning on the loud ? We ’ll take the air you through the top five flake and tell you which one to bribe .
Under the Hood of AMD’s Phenom II X6
In many way of life , AMD ’s new Phenom II X6 is n’t all that unlike from the Phenom II X4 processor . Both chips are build on a 45 nm operation , have the same 125 - watt TDP military rank , and feature the same microarchitecture . Of naturally , the Phenom II X6 is far larger than a Phenom II X4 . A typical Phenom II X4 is 258mm2 . The Phenom II X6 is about 40 percentage larger at 364mm2 . Oddly , AMD would n’t disclose the junction transistor count of the Phenom II X6 , but we ’d guess it ’s the same or pretty close to the hexa - core Opteron 2435 at 904 million . On the surface , it would appear that AMD just took a Phenom II X4 and glued on two more cores . It ’s not quite that simple , though . The L2 cache of the novel flake remain at 512 KB per core . The 6 MB of L3 stash is also the same as with the older quadriceps - core . That ’s actually a reduction since the 6 MB of L3 is shared among six instruction execution cores instead of just four . Whether that make for into the performance of chip , is n’t yet clear . But AMD has made some other changes to advance operation .
Turbo Boost, Meet Turbo Core
AMD ’s top - remainder Phenom II X6 1090 T has a lower clock than the Phenom II X4 965 BE , but AMD make up for that , and addresses the lack of software and games optimized for six - cores , by introducing a new Turbo Core mode . Turbo Core overclocks three of the gist in the CPU when threading loading are weak . The 1090 tetraiodothyronine will Turbo Core from 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz , and the 1055 T will Turbo Core from 2.8GHz to 3.3GHz . The modal value is transparent to the group O and works without the demand of drivers . It ’s also not as discriminatory as Intel ’s like Turbo Boost , where apps that hit only one center will get more of a rise than apps that polish off two or three . AMD aver its tests show that the biggest benefit come from the three - inwardness increase in games and apps that have not been optimise for four or more quad . Folks who require to mess with overclocking limits and ratio for Turbo Core can do so using AMD ’s OverDrive service program .
Keeping Things Compatible
AMD ’s intensity level has been its ability to make new chips work in old motherboards . In the three years that Socket AM2 + has been out , Intel has hit the sack Socket 775 and infix two new sockets that are incompatible with each other . That AMD can get its new Phenom II X6 to work in sure-enough AM2 + boards ( and probably even a few AM2 boards , too ) is a will to estimable provision . The only restrain factor for upgraders with the newfangled Phenom X6 is likely a board ’s thermal : The board must support 125 - watt CPU for the user to expect long - terminus dependableness . BIOS updates will also be required , but AMD says that at launch , no fewer than 160 boards will have BIOS updates uncommitted to abide the Phenom II X6 .
Make Way for the 890FX Chipset
With the raw chip , AMD is also introducing a Modern chipset serial : the 8 series . The top chipset from AMD is the 890FX , which will put back the 790FX chipset . The 890FX has a big leg up over its Intel twin , the P55 chipset , in the number of PCI Express 2.0 lanes the chipset supports . One of the job we ’ve carry into with the P55 lately is the want of useable PCI - Es lanes to pass datum from USB 3.0 and SATA 6 drives . With many P55 motherboards , installing two GPUs into the x16 PCI - atomic number 99 slots will handcuff the bandwidth of USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices . Not all boards are affected , but most are . With 42 PCI - E 2.0 lane useable in the 890FX chipset , you could well run multiple GPUs as well as your other twist without being constrained . equate that to Intel ’s P55 chipset which have 16 PCI - E 2.0 lanes in CPU and a pathetic eight PCI - eastward 1.0 speed lanes in the P55 chipset itself .
The new 890FX also features the SB850 south bridge with native SATA 6 backing for six devices . The one fundamental item missing from the SB850 is USB 3.0 . Most circuit card trafficker are instead integrating NEC controllers to add the feature .
Inside the Phenom II X6
AMD ’s new Thuban core is essentially the Istanbul core used in the Opteron 2435 . Packing roughly 904 million junction transistor , the monolithic core has controllers for both DDR2 and DDR3 embedded in it . While the Opteron that it ’s descend from has up to four Hyper Transport links for multiprocessor configurations , Thuban apply just one HT link to unite to the chipset .
So Is It Fast?
We put Phenom II X6 up against Intel ’s best and bright .
As always , this is where the safety encounter the route , and to get a good feel for where Phenom II X6 1090 T falls , we compared it to a lot of chipping including the $ 282 2.8GHz Core i7 - 860 , the $ 200 2.66GHz Core i7 - 750 , the $ 195 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition , and , of course , the $ 1,000 3.33GHz Core i7 - 980X.
We used identical GeForce GTX 280 poster in all of our examination chopine , along with the same artwork drivers . For the Athlon examination , we used the new MSI 890 - FXA GD70 motherboard . A Gigabyte GA - P55A - UD6 power the LGA1156 parts , and an Asus P6X58D Premium address the chore for the LGA1366 procs . All of the double - channel boards used 4 GB of DDR3/1333 RAM , while the treble - communication channel control board had 6 GB of DDR3/1333 . Windows 7 Professional and check 150 GB Western Digital Raptor 150 effort were used in all the platform .
For benchmarks , we ran more than two twelve tests to find the strength and weakness of AMD ’s new chips . The results are interesting , to say the least .
First , the giant benchmark chart ( sink in to embiggen ):
Video Encoding and Video Editing
In general , more cores mean better execution with multithreaded encoders and nonlinear editor , but there ’s more to the story than cores . Phenom II X6 chips continues to feature a three - way out implementation core vs. the Core i3/5/7 processors ’ four - take execution substance . Against its natural competitor , the similarly price 2.8GHz Core i7 - 860 , the 1090 tetraiodothyronine is at a handsome disadvantage , with encoding meter in both Premiere Pro CS3 and Sony Vegas Pro 9 taking about 22 percent longer . HandBrake saw the 1090 T do a little better , but AMD ’s hexa - core was still about 14 percent slower than Intel ’s quad . The closest the 1090 T come to that potato chip was in our MainConcept Reference encode challenge . The 1090 T does a circumstances better against the Core i5 - 750 , which does n’t have the reward of HyperThreading , but the 750 is also $ 100 crummy .
3D Modeling
This is the where the Phenom X6 1090 T shines the brightest . The 1090 T virtuoso both the Core i5 - 750 and Core i7 - 860 in Cinebench 10 and 11.5 , and POV Ray 3.7 . It even manage to outpace the $ 562 Core i7 - 870 in POV Ray and Cinebench 11.5 .
Photo Editing
We saw hit - or - miss results here . Against the Core i7 - 860 , the 1090 T was fast in our Adobe Lightroom file - conversion test by a healthy 10 pct , but it got blitz in our ProShow Producer slide show – creation test by 17 pct . Photoshop CS3 also saw the 1090 T trailing by about 5.4 percentage . In the intemperately multithreaded Bibble 5.02 , we saw both chips on equal footing , with the 1090 thyroxine trailing just slightly by two percent . As you ’d expect , the 1090 thyroxin did much better against the Core i5 - 750 and much bad against the Core i7 - 870 . We guess , as they say , you get ta plug your weight unit .
Memory Bandwidth
The 1090 MT in reality has the highest memory bandwidth of the AMD CPUs and also aces the dismal memory bandwidth of the two-fold - core Core i3 - 530 , but all three Clarkdale parts and the two LGA1366 CPUs leave the 1090 T behind . One affair to keep in mind : store bandwidth is apparently not the end - all , be - all as the Core i7 - 980X has only middling bandwidth yet is still the immobile central processing unit here .
Gaming
The area where the 1090 T was most disappointing was gaming . Against the Core i7 - 860 , we see the 1090 T trail by double digit in Far Cry 2 , World In Conflict , Resident Evil 5 , and the Valve Particle Test . The best that the 1090 liothyronine did was in Dirt 2 , where it beat the Core i7 - 860 by 28 percent . However , we distrust that our Core i7 - 860 score is an mistake on our part as it does n’t line up with the how the Core 5 - 750 and Core i7 - 870 performed . Also , keep in mind , that we run our tests at very depleted resolutions . At normal gaming resolutions of 1920×1200 , the public presentation really transmutation to GPU land , and you would find the margins closing up to the point where the CPU but does n’t weigh that much to the average gamer .
The Verdict
We did n’t promise you an action mechanism - hero ending and you ’re not getting one . In the operation report , it ’s a motley subject matter . For the most part , Intel ’s Hyper - wind quad - cores still have the edge . However , Phenom II X6 gets far closer than AMD has been of recent . AMD fans may be a little disappointed that the X6 does n’t spank the equivalent Intel share , but there ’s still a lot of good here . The Phenom II X6 has a great monetary value , it ’s probably compatible with the board you have in your car now , and it give way you six meat . It may not be the happy terminate some were look for , but think of it like the end of Empire Strikes Back . surely , Luke convey his hand cut off off , Vader is his dad , and Han got frozen in carbonite , but maybe , just maybe , there are good thing occur on the celestial horizon .
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