This opens the door for another article comparing the Sandy Bridge processors (when they will be available) to the current (for now) offerings. I'm too waiting for the Sandy Bridge launch (but I probably won't buy one)
Intel is still selling C2Ds. What makes you think SB will be everywhere any time soon? Intel are always slow with their new releases (not easy supplying the whole globe I would think).
I think there is more to it than just price, Intels issue is how fragmented it's market is right now, I like to start with a cheap build, mid range CPU and know I have upgrade options, if I did an AMD Dual Core right now I know that I can go to a 6 Core later for some great performance when it's economically possible.
If I go i3, I have very few upgrade options, need a new motherboard for i5, then If I want to move up from there yet another motherboard for i7..
I personally think this was the worst way to go about covering all areas of the market.
Except if you went Lynnfield right now, you would already be ahead of AMD's fastest 6-core offering. And much cheaper than buying a $100 processor now, with another $200 processor later.
And to the other guy, Intel ramps slowly? Uhhh, not really. Core i7 has been around for 2 years now. In its many flavors. The reason Core 2 Duo still sells... It is actually MUCH faster than that Athlon II x3 Anand just tested.
Intel E7500, still selling on newegg for $125. AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition is currently $99 yet wins 17 out of 26 tests on anand's own bench, and is about 5% faster overall. So for 20% less you get faster performance, plus the opportunity to unlock a free bonus. But you can bet the intel part still sells 5 times more.
I think part of the problem is that AMD is a minority, and this affects their image. Intel has that big, family-friendly, it's-everywhere-so-it-must-be-good appeal. AMD being the niche, it feels like an unknown, possibly unsafe option. In the shop, if you see 7:1 machines with Intel Inside vs AMD, not knowing much about computers, the safer bet seems to be the Intel, regardless of specs.
Personally I'm rooting for AMD to catch up of course :)
You do realize that core i3, i5 and i7 for the socket 1156 all use the same socket? Feel free to drop a G6950 or i7 870 in there - the board doesn't care.
Socket 1366 with 3 memory channels and the upcoming high end platform with 4 channels are where the fun ends. Oh, and Socket 1155 for Sandy Bridge breaking compatibility (again) sucks.
misfit410 writes: > If I go i3, I have very few upgrade options, need a new motherboard for i5, > then If I want to move up from there yet another motherboard for i7..
Why not just use a good P55 board? Supports all of them. eg. Asrock P55 Deluxe, only about $110. I have one with an i3 540, another with an i5 760, and two with i7 870s, the latter overclocking nicely:
I'm glad AMD topped of the tank. I like what they're doing, and as a recent AMD convert, I like to think the future is bright. But that's the problem. The future. I don't know what they've got in the works, but it will have to be funky to compete with Intel. As it now stands, you can't get more value for the money than buying an AMD processor. But even if you buy the newest AMD processor, its almost like you're already two years behind. I've bought 3 AMD processors in the past few months, and I like the value. Sooner or later though, AMD is going to have to seriously revamp their CPUs to stay in the race.
Sometimes I feel like AMD is the USSR, and Intel is America. Yeah, they got a basketball into space. We landed on the moon. At some point, AMD isn't going to be able to lag behind as they are, just competing on price. If Intel sold a 32nm 4 core part for $150, it would end AMD as we know it. Sometimes I feel like AMD is running on borrowed time. Unlike the space race and arms race, no one at Intel tosses and turns at night thinking about what the next weapon coming out of AMD is. AMD needs to take about 10% more market share from Intel, then someone might start worrying. Still, even if AMDs run is over, the past few years have been awesome for consumers reaping the benefits of AMDs pricing.
"If Intel sold a 32nm 4 core part for $150, it would end AMD as we know it."
AMD have already been selling $99 quad-cores for over a year. What would that change?
Let me guess: you're inventing some hypothetical situation where Intel decides to just give away Sandy Bridge, their fancy new technology, when it's at the top of its game.
And yet, that's exactly what you're accusing AMD of doing wrong. Stick to what you know, people. Being an "enthusiast" of something is a hobby and not a profession. There's a reason the people in charge of those things wear suits instead of comic book shirts and don't do anything remotely like what every backseat businessman of the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny DIY desktop market suggests. :p
I believe what he means is that if Intel were to sell current Bloomfield/Clarksfield quad-core processors for $150 -- and let's be honest, they could do so considering the chips aren't bigger than the Thuban core -- then there would be less incentive to buy an AMD quad-core at $100. But then, Intel has never sold their top-flight processors for under $180 really, so we continue with the status quo.
AMD is not really a competitor for Intel right now, so Intel is happy to leave it be. On the other hand, AMD's existence lessen the weight of any "monopolistic practices" accusations against Intel. As for lowering prices... a price war hurts all the competitors, and Intel really has nothing to gain by selling more processors at lower prices
Sometimes I feel like AMD is the USSR, and Intel is America.
&
space race and arms race
Yeah. But you have to follow through with your historical anecdotes: The USSR couldn't compete with the industrial power giant USA, so it went bankrupt due to the - pardon the pun - astronomical - costs of a hi-tech (nuclear) arms race combined with a space program combined with a useless war of atrition in Afghanistan. They ran out of money, USA lost, hooray USA - that's where you'd like to close your book and pretend that (hi-)story is over and done with.
The only thing is: It isn't over (yet)! You (i.e. the USA) are committed to the very same mistake. You are still trying to outrun yourselves in useless money wasters - except that you occupy not only Afghanistan, but also Iraq. I'm always astonished when I hear about the daily costs (was it a million per day? Several millions?) and how you (i.e. the American taxpayer) gladly pay up corrupt government contractors as well as evil private mercenary companies...
If you keep spending like this your crumbling empire will vanish just like the USSR. It's an amusing irony that you trained, supplied and funded your own terrorist #1 to fight the eeevil Soviets :)
You created your very own monster and now it's loose. With a budget of $2.50 for a bunch of box cutters he makes you spend millions and billions on "homeland" security. His plan works. You are terrified, crazed and spending your ass off in order to prevent terrorist attacks that are several thousand times less likely to kill you than dying from a peanut allergy...
And this is why that analogy doesn't work. Intel is much bigger than AMD and has a R&D budget AMD could only dream of, but they are no superpower committed to throw their money out of the window...
Bit-tech already admitted having Sandy Bridge in their test labs and Bulldozer is nowhere to be seen at the moment. Next year will be do or die for AMD. Their GPUs are awesome, they need to stiffen up the competition with their CPUs also. It's always the price, and the performace has been lacking for a while now. I'm and AMD user, but if Bulldozer disappoints I'll go with Sandy Bridge for my next build.
Seems like you are some creative, rendering type of PC user. Sadly/Gladly 90% are not.
Performance has become pretty irrelevant, hasn't it? You get a 4-core @ 3GHz thrown at you for less than $100.
What of the things your average Joe does with his PC isn't possible with that kind of computer? E-Mail? Ridiculous. Surfing? Ridiculous. Messaging? Ridiculous. HD-Videos? Oh, come on!
Thanks to shabby console ports and stagnation in the PC Games market, you can easily run about any game with a 2 year old HD4870...
What exactly does Joe need more cores/GHz/performance for?
The argument is as follows: The hi-end/hi-performance market segmet is negligible. If e.g. Apple really adopts AMD hardware for their fancy iSomething builds, they will be on the rise again.
Die for AMD? In fact 2011 is a year for AMD to catch up much they have lost since 2007. Just look at what Intel will be doing: 1.ship the same crappy Atom and the revised 32-nm version won't come before Q4 2011--Ok, at ultraportable/netbook, Intel is doomed to fail in the face of mighty Brazos. It will retain some market at lower-TDP such as tablets but that's the world for Tegra 2. 2.launch the SNB, an architecural upgrade from Westmere, which suggest that you can't expect much performance boost from current dual-core Pentium and i3 parts. That means Intel's still got weak low-end products. Keep in mind that the dual-core SNBs will compete with Llano APUs with 4 revised K10 cores+HD5500 level IGP. The Athlon X4s can already dominate i3s, so we can't say i3 2000 series will do better job than Llano. 3. The high-end is always Intel's world. But this time life will be hard for SNB quad-cores and Westmere hex-cores. Bulldozer is the first new architecture since K8 (K10 is only an enhanced K8), it has eight cores running at crazy frequency as high as 4GHz. So I'm very certain that it can at least overrun the quad-core SNBs and have similar if not better performance with hex-core Westmeres. Well, there's an eight-core SNB-E, but it's not what AMD is concerned with. For AMD, returning to $300 market, controlled by today's i7 9 Series, is the biggest victory, the $1000 market is meaningless because you can't sell many chips on such outrageous price slot.
So things are not so bad for AMD in the next year as long as they ship their product on time and keep up the pace on Fusion Project.
I don't think anybody is going to be disappointed by Bulldozer. Whereas Sandybridge is an incremental improvement, Bulldozer is a complete redesign. It's a totally new design compared to the K7/K8/Phenom I/Phenom II architecture. Basically, it's the first radically different design to come out of AMD since the launch of the Athlon in 1999, so that should tell you something. We're not going to be seeing modest, single percentage performance increase, it'll likely be on the order of 30-60% depending on what you're doing.
Unfortunately, the auther didn't explain the big and strange difference between the idle power figures of Athlons and Phenoms. For instance: Athlon II X3 455 (3.3GHz) - 63.9W, Athlon II X3 440 (3.0GHz) - 80.3W!
Phenom II X4 970 (3.5GHz) - 66.9, Athlon II X4 645 (3.1GHz) - 75W! Athlon II X4 635 (2.9GHz) - 79.5W!
I am also interested in this difference... specifically the x2 555 vs the x2 565. Almost a 20W difference in idle and a 40W difference at load! What is going on to give this huge difference for (just) a clock bump? Anand, can you please post tested voltages of these cpus? I know from my experience that some motherboards put them at a higher stated voltage (above 1.4v). BTW, I'm 2 for 2 in getting the two extra cores to be stable on the 555.
As I mentioned in the test page our older Athlon II/Phenom II numbers were run on a 7-series board vs. the new 890GX board we switched to in the last review. I've pulled the conflicting numbers to avoid confusion :)
I'm pretty sure the X2 chip offers directed I/O and possibly better vm performance than the X3. It would be interesting to find out.
Also I don't like it when the front page introduction differs from the main article's. I think you should keep it consistent across all front page articles (news or reviews).
I have a Phenom 2 x6 1090T. Now I'm wondering why you didn't push more voltage through that chip? It can handle 1.45volts with a decent cooler easily enough which would have pushed you over that 4ghz mark. I'm also surprised at the large performance difference the 100mhz increase in clockspeed provided in the benchmarks between the 1090T and the 1100T! 108fps for the 1090T and 120fps for the 1100T. That's what... 10-12% improvement for just 100mhz? Doesn't seem to add-up in my eyes.
I use 7zip everyday and find your 7zip benchmark a little misleading. I'd prefer if you just did a bench with only 2 cores enabled. PAR2 already tests 3+ core archiving. By using 7zip you're invoking real-world performance because 7zip is a program many people use daily. It'd be nice to have the 2 core (real-world) performance instead of a theoretical one no user can ever hit.
one thing is missing. I'm much less interested in overclocking than I am interested in undervolting. 3 Weeks ago I bought two Phenom II X2 555 BE C3s for my girlfriend's new PC and mine - and guess what? Both unlocked to quad-cores easily. I was even able to lower the CPU voltage from 1.251V to a mere 1.141V. As a power consumption-meter is on its way to me, I will be able to report power saving numbers, if anyone is interested.
All this 4-core-goodness I got for a mere 75€ a pop. If that's not great performance for an unbeatable price I don't know what is...
And like was mentioned in the article it's not guaranteed that whoever buys the 555/565 BE would be able to unlock the other two cores and run them just fine without instability.
When it's a gamble and not 100% success rate, people who value their time and not wanting to return CPUs and getting another to test tend to either go down to the cheaper x3 or pay a bit more for the i3.
I noticed you're using the x264 pass1 test for load power consumption. Is this really a good choise? All cores aren't maxed out in this test. This is obvious when knowing what x264 is actually doing in pass1 versus pass2, and comparing the speeds confirm this. In pass2, all Phenom II's (x2, x4, x6) have exactly the same speed per core per GHz. In pass1, the speed bumps are far from the nice linear scaling in pass2. The x6 is only twice (2.13x) as fast as the x2, so almost two cores are idle.
Yeah, expecting that. I don't quite understand why putting the stupid sysmark on the test...it just can't tell any difference between processors with different performance :)
There are rumours floating around that Intel is gonna make BIG price cut soon for holiday season due to lower then expected demand, clearing stocks for Sandy Bridge, as well as more people buying iPad then PCs.
SandyBridge will be a top to bottom chip, leaving Current Nehalem for Servers. ( Which is doing VERY well in that area )
Some of the performance data are already leaked, the only things that is left is on the GPU side as well as Official benchmarks.
MicroCenter has been selling the 950 for $199 for a long time now. It has been on SlickDeals front page many times.. They just do that to get traffic to their store, then try to sell you everything else you don't need.
The board has changed to a much more efficient one. It's approximately a constant offset between both configurations, as evidenced by the differences in idle numbers.
Usually this term is associated with a slow down, not a push forward - you slow down at the speed bump. It's sort of like how you don't associate a stop sign with accelerating as fast as you can, which many do right after.
bump (bmp) v. bumped, bump·ing, bumps v.tr. 1. To strike or collide with. 2. To cause to knock against an obstacle. 3. a. To knock to a new position; shift: bumped the crate out of the way. b. To shake up and down; jolt: bumped the child on her knee; was bumped about on a rough flight. 4. a. To displace from a position within a group or organization. b. To deprive (a passenger) of a reserved seat because of overbooking. 5. To raise; boost: bump up the price of gasoline. 6. Sports To pass (a volleyball) by redirecting it with the forearms.
We shall see. If Intel has been 100% successful and reliable in one aspect of computing its dissapointing with its GPU performance.
Always a lot of bluster and pre-release pomp about how it will be many times better than the previous piece of crap and then it hits the floor like a dead moose dropped from 50 feet.
Not sure about the US, but here in Germany the i7 860 has effectively been replaced by the i7 870 since a couple of months. It's 1 - 2 multipliers faster for a small price premium. Currently the 1100T is actually priced a hair above the 870.
Given the approxiamte tie in threaded apps and wins for the 870 in lightly threaded apps and power consumption at any load level I'd certainly go with that one.
MrSpadge is right; when I went looking for one recently, I noticed many stores had the 860 priced higher than the 870, or the gap was so small that the 860 made no sense. So I bought an 870 instead.
Btw, it's a bit misleading IMO to include AMD oc results and yet not at least briefly mention how well the Intel chips also oc, especially given earlier reviews here of the i3 and other options, eg. I get 6.88 for Cinebench 11 with my oc'd 870, 20442 for Cinebench 10 (and this isn't on the high side either).
I've found the 870 to oc better than my older 860 aswell, and not just because of the base clock difference. It just seems to work better. I'm sure I could push it to 4.5+, but there's no need for this on a gaming rig with two GTX 460s SLI. Indeed, so far I find game fps scores are better with HT turned off and a higher CPU clock, so even more headroom is possible (confirmed this effect with 3DMark06, Unigine Heaven, Stalker COP and X3TC so far). With the same Vcore/VTT, my 870 was ok at 4444 instead of 4270 with HT off, and temps were lower. If you want max 3DMark06 overall scores, leave HT on; to max out game fps rates though, try turning HT off and increase the raw clock (I'd like to know which games benefits from HT - none of my current tests show any gain).
Hmm, the '3dsmax 9 - SPECapc' test looks interesting, might give that a spin. Is that a separate download to Viewperf 11?
Like I say though, this is a gaming rig but so far I've yet to find a game/test which benefits from HT. Tests/benchmarks aside however, the games I'll actually be playing are Oblivion, Stalker, CoD4, Red Faction Guerilla, Borderlands, Haxw2 and CoD WaW (mostly the first two initially). If these don't gain from HT either, then I'll just turn it off and move the clock up to 4444 to give better frame rates. I could run it higher I'm sure given the lowish Vcore, but there's just no need.
Oh, here's the CPU-Z with the CPU at 4444 and HT is off:
Full benchmark results available later today (Ungine Heaven, Tropics and Sanctuary, Stalker COP, X3TC, Cinebench, 3DMark06 and Viewperf; Vantage, AvP and 3DMark11 results coming later when I can do them). Comparisons atm cover 8800GT (single and SLI), GTX 460 1GB (single and SLI) and, where my friend has been able to contribute, Radeon 4890 (single and CF) along with his own GTX 460 SLI results.
Anand your gaming benchmarks are pathetic, when are you going to use proper games? You fine well know that you are benching massively cpu bound titles. Get it sorted or put them into your cpu benchmarks.
Sometimes I wish that I could find curiosity articles, but I know that these comparisons consume a lot of time so I understand why such articles don't exist. Perhaps I shall do my own comparisons and post the results? Hm.
Anyway, I'm finally upgrading my system. I've loved this Q6600 quad core and it's still a fantastic processor, but it's become my gaming system's bottleneck. Of course, it's not like I can simply jump up to the next CPU so it was time to overhaul the whole rig. Ouch. Just ouch. I rather dislike doing that. On the bright side, I won't need to do this again for another few years. :) Maybe I should begin saving now... Heh...
I'm curiously wondering what kind of performance gains I'm going to see when moving from the Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz quad core to the X6 1100T 3.3 GHz hexacore. Actually, I expect it to operate in triple core 3.7GHz mode most of the time, because how often will I actually using all six cores? Probably about as often as I've used all four cores lol!
This is going to be a heck of a jump in raw speed alone, then factoring in the technology improvements (not just the cores, but the whole package) since the Q6600's era and I'm hoping for a very noticeable improvement. Granted, everything else is changing too.
Intel did fine by me with its $300-some Q6600. Fine indeed. It has been awhile since I've ran an AMD rig, but I hope that AMD does just as well with its $270-some 1100T.
I sure wish that motherboard manufacturers made this easier on us consumers. Hopefully one day we'll look back on this need to own a different board for everything and see it as the dark ages that it is.
Oh well, at least my new motherboard will be AM3 compatible.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
65 Comments
Back to Article
8steve8 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
kind of surprised sandy bridge wasn't even mentioned in the conclusions...considering these cpus will only be competing with the westmeres for less than a month before sandy bridge is everywhere...
AMD seems to only be able to compete on price, kind of sad.
It'll likely not change as long as Intel is >18 months ahead in terms of process technology used in fabrication.
Calin - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
This opens the door for another article comparing the Sandy Bridge processors (when they will be available) to the current (for now) offerings. I'm too waiting for the Sandy Bridge launch (but I probably won't buy one)semo - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Intel is still selling C2Ds. What makes you think SB will be everywhere any time soon? Intel are always slow with their new releases (not easy supplying the whole globe I would think).vol7ron - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Doesn't the US come first?Einy0 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Think again... Almost all tech companies release products in Asia first.SandmanWN - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Errr "leaked" their first.misfit410 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I think there is more to it than just price, Intels issue is how fragmented it's market is right now, I like to start with a cheap build, mid range CPU and know I have upgrade options, if I did an AMD Dual Core right now I know that I can go to a 6 Core later for some great performance when it's economically possible.If I go i3, I have very few upgrade options, need a new motherboard for i5, then If I want to move up from there yet another motherboard for i7..
I personally think this was the worst way to go about covering all areas of the market.
BSMonitor - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Except if you went Lynnfield right now, you would already be ahead of AMD's fastest 6-core offering. And much cheaper than buying a $100 processor now, with another $200 processor later.And to the other guy, Intel ramps slowly? Uhhh, not really. Core i7 has been around for 2 years now. In its many flavors. The reason Core 2 Duo still sells... It is actually MUCH faster than that Athlon II x3 Anand just tested.
silverblue - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
LOL... no it's not. I really don't know where you got that from.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Intel E7500, still selling on newegg for $125. AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition is currently $99 yet wins 17 out of 26 tests on anand's own bench, and is about 5% faster overall. So for 20% less you get faster performance, plus the opportunity to unlock a free bonus. But you can bet the intel part still sells 5 times more.slagar - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
I think part of the problem is that AMD is a minority, and this affects their image. Intel has that big, family-friendly, it's-everywhere-so-it-must-be-good appeal. AMD being the niche, it feels like an unknown, possibly unsafe option.In the shop, if you see 7:1 machines with Intel Inside vs AMD, not knowing much about computers, the safer bet seems to be the Intel, regardless of specs.
Personally I'm rooting for AMD to catch up of course :)
MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
You do realize that core i3, i5 and i7 for the socket 1156 all use the same socket? Feel free to drop a G6950 or i7 870 in there - the board doesn't care.Socket 1366 with 3 memory channels and the upcoming high end platform with 4 channels are where the fun ends. Oh, and Socket 1155 for Sandy Bridge breaking compatibility (again) sucks.
MrS
mapesdhs - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
misfit410 writes:
> If I go i3, I have very few upgrade options, need a new motherboard for i5,
> then If I want to move up from there yet another motherboard for i7..
Why not just use a good P55 board? Supports all of them. eg. Asrock P55
Deluxe, only about $110. I have one with an i3 540, another with an i5 760,
and two with i7 870s, the latter overclocking nicely:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1507189
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1506944
And from what I've read so far, the i3s oc like crazy (I'm expecting good
results, not started yet, but the chip is idling at only 17C with a TRUE).
You don't need different mbds for these CPUs, just choose wisely.
Ian.
rwgove - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
they didnt mention bulldozer, either. what's your point?ckryan - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I'm glad AMD topped of the tank. I like what they're doing, and as a recent AMD convert, I like to think the future is bright. But that's the problem. The future. I don't know what they've got in the works, but it will have to be funky to compete with Intel. As it now stands, you can't get more value for the money than buying an AMD processor. But even if you buy the newest AMD processor, its almost like you're already two years behind. I've bought 3 AMD processors in the past few months, and I like the value. Sooner or later though, AMD is going to have to seriously revamp their CPUs to stay in the race.Sometimes I feel like AMD is the USSR, and Intel is America. Yeah, they got a basketball into space. We landed on the moon. At some point, AMD isn't going to be able to lag behind as they are, just competing on price. If Intel sold a 32nm 4 core part for $150, it would end AMD as we know it. Sometimes I feel like AMD is running on borrowed time. Unlike the space race and arms race, no one at Intel tosses and turns at night thinking about what the next weapon coming out of AMD is. AMD needs to take about 10% more market share from Intel, then someone might start worrying. Still, even if AMDs run is over, the past few years have been awesome for consumers reaping the benefits of AMDs pricing.
OneArmedScissorB - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
"If Intel sold a 32nm 4 core part for $150, it would end AMD as we know it."AMD have already been selling $99 quad-cores for over a year. What would that change?
Let me guess: you're inventing some hypothetical situation where Intel decides to just give away Sandy Bridge, their fancy new technology, when it's at the top of its game.
And yet, that's exactly what you're accusing AMD of doing wrong. Stick to what you know, people. Being an "enthusiast" of something is a hobby and not a profession. There's a reason the people in charge of those things wear suits instead of comic book shirts and don't do anything remotely like what every backseat businessman of the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny DIY desktop market suggests. :p
JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I believe what he means is that if Intel were to sell current Bloomfield/Clarksfield quad-core processors for $150 -- and let's be honest, they could do so considering the chips aren't bigger than the Thuban core -- then there would be less incentive to buy an AMD quad-core at $100. But then, Intel has never sold their top-flight processors for under $180 really, so we continue with the status quo.Calin - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
AMD is not really a competitor for Intel right now, so Intel is happy to leave it be. On the other hand, AMD's existence lessen the weight of any "monopolistic practices" accusations against Intel.As for lowering prices... a price war hurts all the competitors, and Intel really has nothing to gain by selling more processors at lower prices
Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
&
Yeah. But you have to follow through with your historical anecdotes:
The USSR couldn't compete with the industrial power giant USA, so it went bankrupt due to the - pardon the pun - astronomical - costs of a hi-tech (nuclear) arms race combined with a space program combined with a useless war of atrition in Afghanistan. They ran out of money, USA lost, hooray USA - that's where you'd like to close your book and pretend that (hi-)story is over and done with.
The only thing is: It isn't over (yet)!
You (i.e. the USA) are committed to the very same mistake. You are still trying to outrun yourselves in useless money wasters - except that you occupy not only Afghanistan, but also Iraq. I'm always astonished when I hear about the daily costs (was it a million per day? Several millions?) and how you (i.e. the American taxpayer) gladly pay up corrupt government contractors as well as evil private mercenary companies...
If you keep spending like this your crumbling empire will vanish just like the USSR.
It's an amusing irony that you trained, supplied and funded your own terrorist #1 to fight the eeevil Soviets :)
You created your very own monster and now it's loose.
With a budget of $2.50 for a bunch of box cutters he makes you spend millions and billions on "homeland" security. His plan works. You are terrified, crazed and spending your ass off in order to prevent terrorist attacks that are several thousand times less likely to kill you than dying from a peanut allergy...
And this is why that analogy doesn't work.
Intel is much bigger than AMD and has a R&D budget AMD could only dream of, but they are no superpower committed to throw their money out of the window...
Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
It should be:"They ran out of money, USSR lost, hooray USA!"
SandmanWN - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The podiums in peoples basements just keep getting bigger and more nonsensical every day.IMPL0DE - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Bit-tech already admitted having Sandy Bridge in their test labs and Bulldozer is nowhere to be seen at the moment. Next year will be do or die for AMD. Their GPUs are awesome, they need to stiffen up the competition with their CPUs also. It's always the price, and the performace has been lacking for a while now. I'm and AMD user, but if Bulldozer disappoints I'll go with Sandy Bridge for my next build.Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Seems like you are some creative, rendering type of PC user.Sadly/Gladly 90% are not.
Performance has become pretty irrelevant, hasn't it?
You get a 4-core @ 3GHz thrown at you for less than $100.
What of the things your average Joe does with his PC isn't possible with that kind of computer?
E-Mail? Ridiculous.
Surfing? Ridiculous.
Messaging? Ridiculous.
HD-Videos? Oh, come on!
Thanks to shabby console ports and stagnation in the PC Games market, you can easily run about any game with a 2 year old HD4870...
What exactly does Joe need more cores/GHz/performance for?
tim851 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
E-Mail/Surfing/Messaging/HD-Videos...You could do any of that with any of the first Athlon X2s, released in the Summer of '05.
If this is your mindset, what are you doing here? Isn't it pointless to follow CPU news for five years?
Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The argument is as follows:The hi-end/hi-performance market segmet is negligible.
If e.g. Apple really adopts AMD hardware for their fancy iSomething builds, they will be on the rise again.
nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Die for AMD? In fact 2011 is a year for AMD to catch up much they have lost since 2007.Just look at what Intel will be doing:
1.ship the same crappy Atom and the revised 32-nm version won't come before Q4 2011--Ok, at ultraportable/netbook, Intel is doomed to fail in the face of mighty Brazos. It will retain some market at lower-TDP such as tablets but that's the world for Tegra 2.
2.launch the SNB, an architecural upgrade from Westmere, which suggest that you can't expect much performance boost from current dual-core Pentium and i3 parts. That means Intel's still got weak low-end products. Keep in mind that the dual-core SNBs will compete with Llano APUs with 4 revised K10 cores+HD5500 level IGP. The Athlon X4s can already dominate i3s, so we can't say i3 2000 series will do better job than Llano.
3. The high-end is always Intel's world. But this time life will be hard for SNB quad-cores and Westmere hex-cores. Bulldozer is the first new architecture since K8 (K10 is only an enhanced K8), it has eight cores running at crazy frequency as high as 4GHz. So I'm very certain that it can at least overrun the quad-core SNBs and have similar if not better performance with hex-core Westmeres. Well, there's an eight-core SNB-E, but it's not what AMD is concerned with. For AMD, returning to $300 market, controlled by today's i7 9 Series, is the biggest victory, the $1000 market is meaningless because you can't sell many chips on such outrageous price slot.
So things are not so bad for AMD in the next year as long as they ship their product on time and keep up the pace on Fusion Project.
anubis44 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I don't think anybody is going to be disappointed by Bulldozer. Whereas Sandybridge is an incremental improvement, Bulldozer is a complete redesign. It's a totally new design compared to the K7/K8/Phenom I/Phenom II architecture. Basically, it's the first radically different design to come out of AMD since the launch of the Athlon in 1999, so that should tell you something. We're not going to be seeing modest, single percentage performance increase, it'll likely be on the order of 30-60% depending on what you're doing.Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Phenom I was a redesign as well.I still have a bad aftertaste in my mouth when I think about it.
It took them until Phenom II to iron things out.
mino - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
"... Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the Phenom II X2 56[0], today we're..."Should be:
... Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the Phenom II X2 56[0], today we're...
Cheers.
mino - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
:D typo included also by me :)The original article has: "... Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the Phenom II X2 56[5], today we're..."
Aone - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Unfortunately, the auther didn't explain the big and strange difference between the idle power figures of Athlons and Phenoms.For instance:
Athlon II X3 455 (3.3GHz) - 63.9W,
Athlon II X3 440 (3.0GHz) - 80.3W!
Phenom II X4 970 (3.5GHz) - 66.9,
Athlon II X4 645 (3.1GHz) - 75W!
Athlon II X4 635 (2.9GHz) - 79.5W!
shooty - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I am also interested in this difference... specifically the x2 555 vs the x2 565.Almost a 20W difference in idle and a 40W difference at load!
What is going on to give this huge difference for (just) a clock bump?
Anand, can you please post tested voltages of these cpus? I know from my experience that some motherboards put them at a higher stated voltage (above 1.4v).
BTW, I'm 2 for 2 in getting the two extra cores to be stable on the 555.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
not only that but the lowwer Ghz chip was beating the higher Ghz chip in games.Maybe there is more than just a speed bump?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
As I mentioned in the test page our older Athlon II/Phenom II numbers were run on a 7-series board vs. the new 890GX board we switched to in the last review. I've pulled the conflicting numbers to avoid confusion :)Take care,
Anand
semo - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I'm pretty sure the X2 chip offers directed I/O and possibly better vm performance than the X3. It would be interesting to find out.Also I don't like it when the front page introduction differs from the main article's. I think you should keep it consistent across all front page articles (news or reviews).
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I have a Phenom 2 x6 1090T.Now I'm wondering why you didn't push more voltage through that chip? It can handle 1.45volts with a decent cooler easily enough which would have pushed you over that 4ghz mark.
I'm also surprised at the large performance difference the 100mhz increase in clockspeed provided in the benchmarks between the 1090T and the 1100T!
108fps for the 1090T and 120fps for the 1100T.
That's what... 10-12% improvement for just 100mhz? Doesn't seem to add-up in my eyes.
Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Just because your chip can handle 1.45V, doesn't mean that any chip can.nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Thubans can reach 4.0GHz at 1.4V, that's true for almost all the Thuban parts.MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The board has changed. Such things matter in games.MrS
chester457 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I use 7zip everyday and find your 7zip benchmark a little misleading. I'd prefer if you just did a bench with only 2 cores enabled. PAR2 already tests 3+ core archiving. By using 7zip you're invoking real-world performance because 7zip is a program many people use daily. It'd be nice to have the 2 core (real-world) performance instead of a theoretical one no user can ever hit.Finally - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
one thing is missing.I'm much less interested in overclocking than I am interested in undervolting.
3 Weeks ago I bought two Phenom II X2 555 BE C3s for my girlfriend's new PC and mine - and guess what? Both unlocked to quad-cores easily. I was even able to lower the CPU voltage from 1.251V to a mere 1.141V. As a power consumption-meter is on its way to me, I will be able to report power saving numbers, if anyone is interested.
All this 4-core-goodness I got for a mere 75€ a pop.
If that's not great performance for an unbeatable price I don't know what is...
chrnochime - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
And like was mentioned in the article it's not guaranteed that whoever buys the 555/565 BE would be able to unlock the other two cores and run them just fine without instability.When it's a gamble and not 100% success rate, people who value their time and not wanting to return CPUs and getting another to test tend to either go down to the cheaper x3 or pay a bit more for the i3.
ajp_anton - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
I noticed you're using the x264 pass1 test for load power consumption.Is this really a good choise? All cores aren't maxed out in this test. This is obvious when knowing what x264 is actually doing in pass1 versus pass2, and comparing the speeds confirm this.
In pass2, all Phenom II's (x2, x4, x6) have exactly the same speed per core per GHz.
In pass1, the speed bumps are far from the nice linear scaling in pass2. The x6 is only twice (2.13x) as fast as the x2, so almost two cores are idle.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
You'll see this change in the next month when we revamp our Bench suite :)Take care,
Anand
nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Yeah, expecting that. I don't quite understand why putting the stupid sysmark on the test...it just can't tell any difference between processors with different performance :)iwodo - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
There are rumours floating around that Intel is gonna make BIG price cut soon for holiday season due to lower then expected demand, clearing stocks for Sandy Bridge, as well as more people buying iPad then PCs.SandyBridge will be a top to bottom chip, leaving Current Nehalem for Servers. ( Which is doing VERY well in that area )
Some of the performance data are already leaked, the only things that is left is on the GPU side as well as Official benchmarks.
yuriylsh - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
just got a notification from Micro Center about $80 instant savings on i7-950, which means $200 for 3GHz Core i7 - not a bad deal. Is it starting?RyuDeshi - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
MicroCenter has been selling the 950 for $199 for a long time now. It has been on SlickDeals front page many times.. They just do that to get traffic to their store, then try to sell you everything else you don't need.jaydee - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The Phenom II X2 565 is 18% (idle) and 23% (load) more efficient than the Phenom II X2 555?MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
The board has changed to a much more efficient one. It's approximately a constant offset between both configurations, as evidenced by the differences in idle numbers.MrS
vol7ron - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
"today we're getting speed bumps"Usually this term is associated with a slow down, not a push forward - you slow down at the speed bump. It's sort of like how you don't associate a stop sign with accelerating as fast as you can, which many do right after.
Other Thoughts: Perhaps you meant speed burst?
fic2 - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Apparently you don't know that words can have multiple meanings.See #5 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bump
bump (bmp)
v. bumped, bump·ing, bumps
v.tr.
1. To strike or collide with.
2. To cause to knock against an obstacle.
3.
a. To knock to a new position; shift: bumped the crate out of the way.
b. To shake up and down; jolt: bumped the child on her knee; was bumped about on a rough flight.
4.
a. To displace from a position within a group or organization.
b. To deprive (a passenger) of a reserved seat because of overbooking.
5. To raise; boost: bump up the price of gasoline.
6. Sports To pass (a volleyball) by redirecting it with the forearms.
jabber - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
We shall see. If Intel has been 100% successful and reliable in one aspect of computing its dissapointing with its GPU performance.Always a lot of bluster and pre-release pomp about how it will be many times better than the previous piece of crap and then it hits the floor like a dead moose dropped from 50 feet.
I dont see that changing radically.
kwantor - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
How does that work exactly?On 2560x yes, you should get 100+fps on 1024x.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
They're using "Ultra CPU" settings to stress the CPUs. People are probably not really running the game like this.MrS
nitrousoxide - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
It will be bulldozed by eight-core SNB-E, but surely it will bulldoze quad-core SNBs.flyck - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
lets wait and see shall we. If each BD core is faster then each K8 core it might be very close to it.MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Not sure about the US, but here in Germany the i7 860 has effectively been replaced by the i7 870 since a couple of months. It's 1 - 2 multipliers faster for a small price premium. Currently the 1100T is actually priced a hair above the 870.Given the approxiamte tie in threaded apps and wins for the 870 in lightly threaded apps and power consumption at any load level I'd certainly go with that one.
MrS
dertechie - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
They're comparing to i7 860 since they already have one on hand to play with, I suspect.mapesdhs - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
MrSpadge is right; when I went looking for one recently, I noticed many
stores had the 860 priced higher than the 870, or the gap was so small
that the 860 made no sense. So I bought an 870 instead.
Btw, it's a bit misleading IMO to include AMD oc results and yet not at
least briefly mention how well the Intel chips also oc, especially given earlier
reviews here of the i3 and other options, eg. I get 6.88 for Cinebench 11 with
my oc'd 870, 20442 for Cinebench 10 (and this isn't on the high side either).
I've found the 870 to oc better than my older 860 aswell, and not just because
of the base clock difference. It just seems to work better. I'm sure I could push
it to 4.5+, but there's no need for this on a gaming rig with two GTX 460s SLI.
Indeed, so far I find game fps scores are better with HT turned off and a
higher CPU clock, so even more headroom is possible (confirmed this effect
with 3DMark06, Unigine Heaven, Stalker COP and X3TC so far). With the
same Vcore/VTT, my 870 was ok at 4444 instead of 4270 with HT off, and
temps were lower. If you want max 3DMark06 overall scores, leave HT on;
to max out game fps rates though, try turning HT off and increase the raw
clock (I'd like to know which games benefits from HT - none of my current
tests show any gain).
Hmm, the '3dsmax 9 - SPECapc' test looks interesting, might give that a spin.
Is that a separate download to Viewperf 11?
Ian.
silverblue - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - link
You've overclocked your 870, but to what speed?mapesdhs - Monday, December 20, 2010 - link
(sorry for the delay! Been busy fighting snow...)
it's currently at 4270MHz (203.3 x 21) with HT on, ie. see:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1507189
With my original 860, I couldn't get it over 4018 and to reach that
I had to use a much higher Vcore:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1295195
Like I say though, this is a gaming rig but so far I've yet to find
a game/test which benefits from HT. Tests/benchmarks aside
however, the games I'll actually be playing are Oblivion, Stalker,
CoD4, Red Faction Guerilla, Borderlands, Haxw2 and CoD WaW
(mostly the first two initially). If these don't gain from HT either,
then I'll just turn it off and move the clock up to 4444 to give
better frame rates. I could run it higher I'm sure given the lowish
Vcore, but there's just no need.
Oh, here's the CPU-Z with the CPU at 4444 and HT is off:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1506944
Full benchmark results available later today (Ungine Heaven,
Tropics and Sanctuary, Stalker COP, X3TC, Cinebench,
3DMark06 and Viewperf; Vantage, AvP and 3DMark11 results
coming later when I can do them). Comparisons atm cover 8800GT
(single and SLI), GTX 460 1GB (single and SLI) and, where my
friend has been able to contribute, Radeon 4890 (single and CF)
along with his own GTX 460 SLI results.
Ian.
Jamahl - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - link
Anand your gaming benchmarks are pathetic, when are you going to use proper games? You fine well know that you are benching massively cpu bound titles. Get it sorted or put them into your cpu benchmarks.kevith - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
It's a CPU review...Vengeful Giblets - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
Sometimes I wish that I could find curiosity articles, but I know that these comparisons consume a lot of time so I understand why such articles don't exist. Perhaps I shall do my own comparisons and post the results? Hm.Anyway, I'm finally upgrading my system. I've loved this Q6600 quad core and it's still a fantastic processor, but it's become my gaming system's bottleneck. Of course, it's not like I can simply jump up to the next CPU so it was time to overhaul the whole rig. Ouch. Just ouch. I rather dislike doing that. On the bright side, I won't need to do this again for another few years. :) Maybe I should begin saving now... Heh...
I'm curiously wondering what kind of performance gains I'm going to see when moving from the Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz quad core to the X6 1100T 3.3 GHz hexacore. Actually, I expect it to operate in triple core 3.7GHz mode most of the time, because how often will I actually using all six cores? Probably about as often as I've used all four cores lol!
This is going to be a heck of a jump in raw speed alone, then factoring in the technology improvements (not just the cores, but the whole package) since the Q6600's era and I'm hoping for a very noticeable improvement. Granted, everything else is changing too.
Intel did fine by me with its $300-some Q6600. Fine indeed. It has been awhile since I've ran an AMD rig, but I hope that AMD does just as well with its $270-some 1100T.
I sure wish that motherboard manufacturers made this easier on us consumers. Hopefully one day we'll look back on this need to own a different board for everything and see it as the dark ages that it is.
Oh well, at least my new motherboard will be AM3 compatible.