Official Phenom 2 Review Thread

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
Toms should have used the same cooler ...

I was disappointed they used the MSI 790gx with the Phenom II - Tech Report conclusion:

If the DK790GX were much cheaper than the competition, I'd be more inclined to forgive its shortcomings. But at around $147 online, it actually sits at the high end of the 790GX motherboard spectrum?and it's more expensive than the Gigabyte board, too. So, while the DKA790GX Platinum is surely a solid board, there are better options for prospective Phenom II buyers.

 

[qurious63ss]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Flaming? For what correcting you. Very few C2Q can overclock higher then 4ghz and guess what even less P2 can overclock higher then 4ghz. The truth is that you tried to paint a picture that P2 is a better value and clocks higher then C2Q but that is a lie. You just can't expect to make comments like you did and not expect to get challenged.

You might be missing sickbeasts initial point (as I read it) which was that the overclock of the price comparable C2Q is not likely to be as high as the overclock of the price comparable PhII.

For example if Q9400 is price comparable to the PhII 940 then sickbeasts argument is that the Q9400 won't likely overclock as high as the 940...which given the sickly low multi on the Q9400 I would tend to agree with such statement.

It remains to be tested (unless I missed it) whether the IPC delta between Q9400 and X4 940 is negated by the higher overclock on the X4 940 such that an overall price/performance when overclocked can be said to favor the X4 940.

What you are saying appears to not be what sickbeast is saying. You appear to be discussing the peak overclock of the entire C2Q product line (which yes does get >4GHz when you get to those higher multi Q9650 and QX9770 chips) versus that of the Phenom II lineup. Not the same thing sickbeast appears to be discussing.

No, plenty of people can get their Q9400 and Q9550 in the 3.6-3.8ghz range which is where P2 is clocking to.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Im not so sure about Q9400 either, with its 333FSB and a very low multi I question those avg OCes of yours. I agree with IDC that you cant generalize the OCing potential of the entire C2Q lineup since most low/mid end C2Q products have high stock FSB and low multi.

 

[qurious63ss]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Im not so sure about Q9400 either, with its 333FSB and a very low multi I question those avg OCes of yours. I agree with IDC that you cant generalize the OCing potential of the entire C2Q lineup since most low/mid end C2Q products have high stock FSB and low multi.

You can't generalize the P2 either. Even with an unlocked multi the P2 940 seems to be hitting a clock wall at 3.6-3.8ghz on average the Amd 920 ???. The Q9400 would still match and beat the locked Amd 920 and the Q9550 would still match and beat the unlocked Amd 940 on clock for clock and high clocks.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Flaming? For what correcting you. Very few C2Q can overclock higher then 4ghz and guess what even less P2 can overclock higher then 4ghz. The truth is that you tried to paint a picture that P2 is a better value and clocks higher then C2Q but that is a lie. You just can't expect to make comments like you did and not expect to get challenged.

You might be missing sickbeasts initial point (as I read it) which was that the overclock of the price comparable C2Q is not likely to be as high as the overclock of the price comparable PhII.

For example if Q9400 is price comparable to the PhII 940 then sickbeasts argument is that the Q9400 won't likely overclock as high as the 940...which given the sickly low multi on the Q9400 I would tend to agree with such statement.

It remains to be tested (unless I missed it) whether the IPC delta between Q9400 and X4 940 is negated by the higher overclock on the X4 940 such that an overall price/performance when overclocked can be said to favor the X4 940.

What you are saying appears to not be what sickbeast is saying. You appear to be discussing the peak overclock of the entire C2Q product line (which yes does get >4GHz when you get to those higher multi Q9650 and QX9770 chips) versus that of the Phenom II lineup. Not the same thing sickbeast appears to be discussing.

Thank you idontcare, that's exactly what I meant. :beer:

 

[dennilfloss]

Please people edit your quotes to remove the unnecessary parts. :frown:

 

[qurious63ss]

Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

 

[qurious63ss]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Next week Intel will drop their price for a Q9550=$268, Q9400=$219. So I suggest to wait a few more days and maybe Amd might drop the price of PII even more.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=214354

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: qurious63ss

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Next week Intel will drop their price for a Q9550=$268, Q9400=$219. So I suggest to wait a few more days and maybe Amd might drop the price of PII even more.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=214354

AMD is in trouble if Intel undercuts PII by much. AMD just doesnt have the + cash flow to play that game.....

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: qurious63ss

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Next week Intel will drop their price for a Q9550=$268, Q9400=$219. So I suggest to wait a few more days and maybe Amd might drop the price of PII even more.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=214354

AMD is in trouble if Intel undercuts PII by much. AMD just doesnt have the + cash flow to play that game.....

On the topic of price-cuts the truth of it may be that Intel was going to be slashing prices on C2Q's this quarter regardless of PhII for simple fact Intel may be trying to push a mound of inventory builds from Q4 off their books this quarter.

Product takes about 90 days to build from lot-start to ship...and 90 days ago Intel thought they were going to sell about 20% more product than they most recently implied they ended up selling. That says inventory build and that means price-cuts are coming to offload the inventory. AMD may be a secondary victim in this but I really doubt Intel is cutting C2Q prices just to push AMD further into the red.

Intel's stock price doesn't go up just because AMD loses more money, and Intel's decision makers are only making decisions to make INTC go up (or go down less).

 

[qurious63ss]

Don't know the reason either, but I do know that this gives the price/performance edge back to Intel. If Amd wants the price/performance back then they will have to cut the P2 940 down around $225. Did anyone else notice the price on the Q9650 is now $317, this is a very significant price drop that slams the door on Amd if they plan of releasing an FX chip with premium price. Well we all saw this coming and it's what competition is all about.

 

[Peter Trend]

Right guys...I have the phenom II 940 sat next to me. The 9500 is still in my board. If you would like to see comparative benchmarks, please could you tell me ASAP which benches you want me to run on the 9500 before I pull it out?
I own 3DMark06 and SiSoft Sandra Pro Home 2009, for a start.

Please make your replies swift as I want to get the phenom II plugged in!

 

[qurious63ss]

I personally would like to see what's the max clock the P2 will do for 24/7 operation. Thanks.

 

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: Peter Trend
Right guys...I have the phenom II 940 sat next to me. The 9500 is still in my board. If you would like to see comparative benchmarks, please could you tell me ASAP which benches you want me to run on the 9500 before I pull it out?
I own 3DMark06 and SiSoft Sandra Pro Home 2009, for a start.

Please make your replies swift as I want to get the phenom II plugged in!

IMHO what you have will do.. Maybe a game benchmark or two.

I think we are really just interested in how far that PII 940 will go. I assume your going straight to H20?

 

[Peter Trend]

Sadly H2O kit isnt here yet, so it will be on air with the heatpipe sink included. I've just run as many benches on Sandra as I could find relative to processor use, now I will do FRAPS on a few games, DEFINITELY including GTAIV as it seems to need a lot of CPU speed. For phenom II I will start the benches at stock and then just see how far I can OC with air. Should be posting results sometimes tomorrow guys.

I could test (but no time for ALL of them): GTA IV, Oblivion, Fallout 3, COD 4, Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Red Alert 3.

Vote now

 

[William Gaatjes]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: qurious63ss

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
I didn't say it was a scam only misleading and purposefully done.

Here's a fact check for everyone here in case it doesn't click.

1) the PII isn't a magic chip that brings AMD to Intel's level.
2) The PII is and always will be slower than i7, and hopefully you understand that the i7 isn't their competition with this chip.
3) the PII is actually slower overall than a C2Q which has been available for months, sometimes not by a large margin but slower is still slower any way you slice it.
4) The names chosen for the PII were deliberately done so to mislead people into buying them thinking they were getting i7 performance for hundreds less. Nothing more and nothing less in my view.

That's how it is. You can argue that competition is good and blah blah but the simple fact still remains, AMD is behind Intel. Months behind, perhaps years...i'm not an engineer so I cannot say.

I agree with you, but you should point out that the Phenom 2 is a slightly better value than a C2Q when you take everything into account. The Phenom 2 920 in particular is a very good value and would be hard to beat with a C2Q at the same pricepoint.

Wrong. The Phenom 2 is not a better value. The only people that should consider upgrading to P2 is someone who already owns an AM2+ system. If you own an Intel 775 system then switching to P2 is stupid. If you are in the market for a new systems then you have a whole bunch of variables that can sway you back and forth but there is no definitive answer that makes P2 a better value then C2Q.

Right, and time will tell how far Intel is willing to drop prices on their C2Qs which may further push the PII out of the running for many people.

There is no denying that the P2 is cheaper than and performs better than the C2Q chips within their respective price markets. They also generally overclock better. Plus there is the fact that AMD platform is cheaper, and you don't need to worry about DDR3 or a $300 motherboard.

I can deny it all I want, because it is not true. I ran a C2Q just fine without DDR3, and with a $110 mobo.

Yes, I just stability tested my Q9550 C1 with this old P35 board in my sig at 3.8Ghz. 448x8.5 @ 1.38v in bios (1.35v idle and 1.29v load). The PII is cheaper only for those who are upgrading AM2+ boards. Everyone else will get better performance from Intel parts, and like I said...we will see how low intel cuts prices.

I am willing to bet that a DDR2 based P45 or x38/x48 board running a C2Q will still outpace a PII. Memory speed doesn't play that great a role in the performance of the LGA775 chips.

The core generation cpu's of intel always have been memory bandwidth starved. That is why Intel introduced the cpu's with so much cache. It is also the reason why core i7 has an integrated memory controller. Because those core's are so fast they need every little bit of bandwidth they can get. When originally the core architecture was designed Intel already knew it loved memory bandwidth. See for example this page about the architecture of the core. Penryn is the second generation core.

Memory disambiguation: the data stream version of speculative execution

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Don't know the reason either, but I do know that this gives the price/performance edge back to Intel. If Amd wants the price/performance back then they will have to cut the P2 940 down around $225. Did anyone else notice the price on the Q9650 is now $317, this is a very significant price drop that slams the door on Amd if they plan of releasing an FX chip with premium price. Well we all saw this coming and it's what competition is all about.

$317!? :shocked: I have not been following C2Q pricing all that close for a couple months but that seems crazy low. The pressure is on AMD now.

Thankfully those PhII chips are smaller (i.e. cheaper if yields are comparable) than the Phenom chips so they should be able to weather price drops a little better with the X4 940 than they were doing with the X4 9950.

Originally posted by: William Gaatjes
The core generation cpu's of intel always have been memory bandwidth starved. That is why Intel introduced the cpu's with so much cache. It is also the reason why core i7 has an integrated memory controller. Because those core's are so fast they need every little bit of bandwidth they can get. When originally the core architecture was designed Intel already knew it loved memory bandwidth. See for example this page about the architecture of the core. Penryn is the second generation core.

Memory disambiguation: the data stream version of speculative execution

Just another supporting review link for this statement, techreport investigated the performance impact of varying the L3$/NB (uncore) frequency on latency/bandwidth and real-application results with the i7 940 and an i7 965 underclocked to simulate an i7 940.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16044

Originally posted by: Peter Trend
Right guys...I have the phenom II 940 sat next to me. The 9500 is still in my board. If you would like to see comparative benchmarks, please could you tell me ASAP which benches you want me to run on the 9500 before I pull it out?
I own 3DMark06 and SiSoft Sandra Pro Home 2009, for a start.

Please make your replies swift as I want to get the phenom II plugged in!

See PM

 

[v8envy]

Q9650 for $319? Where at? I need a new quad, I would be so all over this. The egg has the 9550 for $319, the Q9650s are still $550.

I'm exceedingly happy that AMD now has a worthy competitor not only to the Q6600 but to midrange Intel SKUs. Which means the Yorkfield CPUs will finally experience long overdue price cuts. And a home in one of my machines.

 

[qurious63ss]

New prices Jan 18th.

 

[Peter Trend]

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
New prices Jan 18th.

Where did you hear that? Sounds good, inevitable and necessary

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Price is irrelevant to preformance. The PII 940 is competing with the Q9550 in performance. In that comparason the Q9550 wins.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: William Gaatjes

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: qurious63ss

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
I didn't say it was a scam only misleading and purposefully done.

Here's a fact check for everyone here in case it doesn't click.

1) the PII isn't a magic chip that brings AMD to Intel's level.
2) The PII is and always will be slower than i7, and hopefully you understand that the i7 isn't their competition with this chip.
3) the PII is actually slower overall than a C2Q which has been available for months, sometimes not by a large margin but slower is still slower any way you slice it.
4) The names chosen for the PII were deliberately done so to mislead people into buying them thinking they were getting i7 performance for hundreds less. Nothing more and nothing less in my view.

That's how it is. You can argue that competition is good and blah blah but the simple fact still remains, AMD is behind Intel. Months behind, perhaps years...i'm not an engineer so I cannot say.

I agree with you, but you should point out that the Phenom 2 is a slightly better value than a C2Q when you take everything into account. The Phenom 2 920 in particular is a very good value and would be hard to beat with a C2Q at the same pricepoint.

Wrong. The Phenom 2 is not a better value. The only people that should consider upgrading to P2 is someone who already owns an AM2+ system. If you own an Intel 775 system then switching to P2 is stupid. If you are in the market for a new systems then you have a whole bunch of variables that can sway you back and forth but there is no definitive answer that makes P2 a better value then C2Q.

Right, and time will tell how far Intel is willing to drop prices on their C2Qs which may further push the PII out of the running for many people.

There is no denying that the P2 is cheaper than and performs better than the C2Q chips within their respective price markets. They also generally overclock better. Plus there is the fact that AMD platform is cheaper, and you don't need to worry about DDR3 or a $300 motherboard.

I can deny it all I want, because it is not true. I ran a C2Q just fine without DDR3, and with a $110 mobo.

Yes, I just stability tested my Q9550 C1 with this old P35 board in my sig at 3.8Ghz. 448x8.5 @ 1.38v in bios (1.35v idle and 1.29v load). The PII is cheaper only for those who are upgrading AM2+ boards. Everyone else will get better performance from Intel parts, and like I said...we will see how low intel cuts prices.

I am willing to bet that a DDR2 based P45 or x38/x48 board running a C2Q will still outpace a PII. Memory speed doesn't play that great a role in the performance of the LGA775 chips.

The core generation cpu's of intel always have been memory bandwidth starved. That is why Intel introduced the cpu's with so much cache. It is also the reason why core i7 has an integrated memory controller. Because those core's are so fast they need every little bit of bandwidth they can get. When originally the core architecture was designed Intel already knew it loved memory bandwidth. See for example this page about the architecture of the core. Penryn is the second generation core.

Memory disambiguation: the data stream version of speculative execution

DDR3 =/= uber gains. I don't care what people say, the numbers speak for themselves.

Lets not beat around the bush...AMD CPUs are still slower than Intel CPUs.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Price is irrelevant to preformance. The PII 940 is competing with the Q9550 in performance. In that comparason the Q9550 wins.

Isn't it the consumer who determines which CPU compares with which CPU?

Most consumers compare based on price.

 

[Qbah]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: qurious63ss
Not sure why people are comparing P2 940 to Q9400. The direct competitor to the P2 940 is the Q9550, the Q9400 is for the P2 920.

Looking at Newegg the PhII 940 is $274.99. The Q9400 is $269.99.

The Q9550 is $324.99. Maybe that's why.

Price is irrelevant to preformance. The PII 940 is competing with the Q9550 in performance. In that comparason the Q9550 wins.

Isn't it the consumer who determines which CPU compares with which CPU?

Most consumers compare based on price.

That would be my assumption too. You look up one product, check what the competition has in the same price range and select the one that's the fastest (or whatever criteria you base your purchase on).

EDIT: Having written that, I saw reviews comparing the 940 to the Q9300 and both trading blows. Seems about right (in terms of price and performance). Then again you need something more than equal to win a consumer's wallet (what the HD4800 series showed - same performance, a lot cheaper initially).

The Q9550 is faster (double the cache and higher clock than the Q9300). It is more expensive though - however asking 300$ for a quad ain't much. I don't see a reason why one wouldn't spit 50$ more to get it - unless you already have an AM2+ board. Then your obvious choice is the PhII 940