Official Phenom 2 Review Thread

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: DrBombcrater

Originally posted by: SLIM
Finally some other people are also noticing this trend of using DDR3 in the benches and more expensive x48 boards but making price comparisons to DDR2 and P35 equipped C2Q. I think those two factors alone would put the q9550 vs PII 940 in a better light.

Yeah, several sites are pulling that trick. Just finished reading Extreme Tech's rather poor review and they do it too. DDR3-1800 for the benchmarks and DDR2 for the price comparo.

I can't decide if this is incompetence or dishonesty. It's hard to believe there are so many bad hardware reviewers out there all by chance making the same error.

I'm thinking dishonesty. It's such a glaring error that there's no way you could miss something like that when writing an article.



I'm not overly impressed with the Phenom II so far; the 920 in particular. In a lot of gaming benchmarks it seems to be neck and neck with the Q8200. The problem is that the Phenom II 920 is $270 CDN while the Q8200 is $230 CDN on Newegg.

I just hope AMD manages to drop the price low enough to make it a viable option for gaming. Since games are the only reason I upgrade my computer, the gaming benchmark is all I ever look at.

Overclocked even to only 3.5ghz, the PII 940 (and I assume the 920 as well) basically tie the i7 extreme 465. That is very impressive IMO, and shows that the PII responds quite well to overclocking in terms of performance. Go read the last page of the Tech Report review of the PII if you don't believe me.

The Q8200 can rarely break 3ghz due to its pathetic multiplier.

IMO the PII is an interesting chip for someone who needs a cheap to midrange quad core processor.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: aigomorla
dude guys..

leave the i7's out of this.

PHII was NEVER INTENDED to go against i7.

Yes the i7 is faster, better, has more threads, more expensive, will make your epenis the size of texas.

But its not even in the same catigory for competition. :

so why do people keep bringing up i7s?

AMD was aiming at yorkfield, and i think they got pretty dayam close compared to the unspectacular PHI.

It might have something to do with the not-so-subtle naming convention that AMD adopted...

What is the most plausible reasoning you think of for AMD numbering their processors the 920 and the 940?

The PhII may not be competitive with the i7, but AMD sure numbered them in a way to ensure as many potential ignorant consumers at Best Buy are confused enough to think the comparison ought to be made when deciding which system is the best for the dollar...

Don't want your Phenom II 920 compared to an i7 920? Don't name it a 920 when there are literally an infinite number of alternate possible numbers to assign your product...its le enough for me to see why most folks are going to make the comparison from now until 2010.

Seems like a pretty low tactic to me. Some Madison Ave guy probably came up with that one.

But I've seen you say that Nvidia renaming the 8800GT 3 times over as a new products is just fine and dandy.

Originally posted by: dmens

Originally posted by: formulav8
I actually read the AMDZone review and didn't see anything wrong with it? They were basically honest. They didn't have to much in-depth info or a tons of benches but it was worth a read.


Jason

real honest. i like this line

"Phenom II is a real challenger to Intel's Core 2 Quad series of Penryn chips and if they can ram up the clock speed they could take on the Core i7 from benchmarks we've seen."

they say that even as they completely exclude i7 from their comparisons. and they exclude q9400 or 9550, the most direct competitors.

that review is shit

I skimmed over it, I guess it didn't seem near as bad as some of you are making it out to be... I'd still put it above the Hard OCP review. Yup, it was pretty stupid of them to say with more clock speed it could take on Core i7 processors, especially without benching them against it for a comparrison. I guess the reviewer is trying to say a 4GHz PhII would be a competitive part vs. a Core i7... but I don't even think AMD has that on their road map. At any rate, I guess I just didn't think the review was so terrible, and my guess is AMDZone has to buy Intel processors, they probably are not sent test samples from Intel. If I am wrong about that then I wish that they would have showed the PhII against more of it's near-priced competition.

 

[SickBeast]

There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

 

[exar333]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: DrBombcrater

Originally posted by: SLIM
Finally some other people are also noticing this trend of using DDR3 in the benches and more expensive x48 boards but making price comparisons to DDR2 and P35 equipped C2Q. I think those two factors alone would put the q9550 vs PII 940 in a better light.

Yeah, several sites are pulling that trick. Just finished reading Extreme Tech's rather poor review and they do it too. DDR3-1800 for the benchmarks and DDR2 for the price comparo.

I can't decide if this is incompetence or dishonesty. It's hard to believe there are so many bad hardware reviewers out there all by chance making the same error.

I'm thinking dishonesty. It's such a glaring error that there's no way you could miss something like that when writing an article.



I'm not overly impressed with the Phenom II so far; the 920 in particular. In a lot of gaming benchmarks it seems to be neck and neck with the Q8200. The problem is that the Phenom II 920 is $270 CDN while the Q8200 is $230 CDN on Newegg.

I just hope AMD manages to drop the price low enough to make it a viable option for gaming. Since games are the only reason I upgrade my computer, the gaming benchmark is all I ever look at.

Overclocked even to only 3.5ghz, the PII 940 (and I assume the 920 as well) basically tie the i7 extreme 465. That is very impressive IMO, and shows that the PII responds quite well to overclocking in terms of performance. Go read the last page of the Tech Report review of the PII if you don't believe me.

The Q8200 can rarely break 3ghz due to its pathetic multiplier.

IMO the PII is an interesting chip for someone who needs a cheap to midrange quad core processor.

According to the PCGH review, the PII at 3.6 struggled to keep up with the i7 920 at stock. These were gaming benchmarks and synthetic tests. The link to the review is in the OP's post.

 

[a123456]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

That's not really apples to apples. The X4 940 isn't a bad chip especially for those with an AM2 already but you can't really compared a cherry-picked maxed overclocked CPU against something else at stock.

That's like saying some hand-picked Netburst P4 clocked high enough can beat a C2D running at stock so the P4 is a better CPU.

I'm guessing the normal range for the X4 940 is 3.4-3.8 with some reaching 4.0. As far as I've seen multiple review sites have topped around 3.5. Some 3.8. Only XS has 4.0 for now. Generally similar ranges to the Q9xxx in terms of Ghz.

This chip was supposed to compete with midrange Yorkfields and then the AM3 version against the i5/i7.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: a123456

Originally posted by: SickBeast
There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

This chip was supposed to compete with midrange Yorkfields and then the AM3 version against the i5/i7.

What makes you think the AM3 version will compete with i7 when the AM2+ version lags behind Yorkie?

Lower TDP may mean lower VID/slightly higher overclock, but it isnt going to jump a generation of chips.

i5 and 32nm are just around the corner.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: a123456

Originally posted by: SickBeast
There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

That's not really apples to apples. The X4 940 isn't a bad chip especially for those with an AM2 already but you can't really compared a cherry-picked maxed overclocked CPU against something else at stock.

That's like saying some hand-picked Netburst P4 clocked high enough can beat a C2D running at stock so the P4 is a better CPU.

I'm guessing the normal range for the X4 940 is 3.4-3.8 with some reaching 4.0. As far as I've seen multiple review sites have topped around 3.5. Some 3.8. Only XS has 4.0 for now. Generally similar ranges to the Q9xxx in terms of Ghz.

This chip was supposed to compete with midrange Yorkfields and then the AM3 version against the i5/i7.

I think you guys are looking too hard into the AMDZone comments. All the reviewer was stating is that if AMD can ramp the clock speed up it can compete with Core i7. I guess I don't see what's wrong with that statement. Of course if AMD ramps up PhII clock speed, I'm sure Intel has some headroom they can pull out on the Core i7 as well. But all the reviewer stated was that if AMD can push the clock speed up they can compete with higher end Intel CPU's.

 

[ShawnD1]

I guess you're right about the Phenom II being pretty good. I was wasting too much time on Anandtech and Tom's Hardware when I should have been looking at PC Games Hardware.

I never put too much faith in overclocking because my current CPU and motherboard are broken due to overclocking. They were fine for a few months until they were getting nonstop math errors if set to anything other than stock speed. Obviously that doesn't happen to everybody, but it goes to show that you can't assume a processor can be overclocked to match a higher up processor. It may or it may not.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
I'm still holding out for a $100 quad core.

That day is coming sooner rather than later, and you have AMD to thank for it.

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
What makes you think the AM3 version will compete with i7 when the AM2+ version lags behind Yorkie?

I don't think that, but I do think it will bring PII another step closer to a C2Q. According to AMD (disclaimers apply) DDR3 will net 2-4% more performance.

BTW, did ANY of the reviewers compare against C2Q on DDR2?

 

[ZOXXO]

Originally posted by: Zap


BTW, did ANY of the reviewers compare against C2Q on DDR2?

Bit Tech

 

[Cookie Monster]

AM3 denebs will probably net them maybe ~5% extra performance thanks to DDR3 and an increase in un-core frequency (NB/IMC/L3). Its strange to see the desktop PII only having a un-core frequency of 1.8Ghz where as the shanghai's are clocked at 2.2GHz.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: a123456

Originally posted by: SickBeast
There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

That's not really apples to apples. The X4 940 isn't a bad chip especially for those with an AM2 already but you can't really compared a cherry-picked maxed overclocked CPU against something else at stock.

That's like saying some hand-picked Netburst P4 clocked high enough can beat a C2D running at stock so the P4 is a better CPU.

I'm guessing the normal range for the X4 940 is 3.4-3.8 with some reaching 4.0. As far as I've seen multiple review sites have topped around 3.5. Some 3.8. Only XS has 4.0 for now. Generally similar ranges to the Q9xxx in terms of Ghz.

This chip was supposed to compete with midrange Yorkfields and then the AM3 version against the i5/i7.

I think you guys are looking too hard into the AMDZone comments. All the reviewer was stating is that if AMD can ramp the clock speed up it can compete with Core i7. I guess I don't see what's wrong with that statement. Of course if AMD ramps up PhII clock speed, I'm sure Intel has some headroom they can pull out on the Core i7 as well. But all the reviewer stated was that if AMD can push the clock speed up they can compete with higher end Intel CPU's.

I was reading into the Tech Report comments and looking at their graphs. At 3.5ghz, the P2 can keep up with the i7 extreme 465.

 

[dmens]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
I skimmed over it, I guess it didn't seem near as bad as some of you are making it out to be... I'd still put it above the Hard OCP review. Yup, it was pretty stupid of them to say with more clock speed it could take on Core i7 processors, especially without benching them against it for a comparrison. I guess the reviewer is trying to say a 4GHz PhII would be a competitive part vs. a Core i7... but I don't even think AMD has that on their road map. At any rate, I guess I just didn't think the review was so terrible, and my guess is AMDZone has to buy Intel processors, they probably are not sent test samples from Intel. If I am wrong about that then I wish that they would have showed the PhII against more of it's near-priced competition.

what im saying is that they can compare phenom 2 to i7 all they want, the fact remains that they left out i7 920 from any of their benchmarks. so even if they wanted to extrapolate on performance with future phenom 2 clock speeds, they really have nothing to base their claims on. not to mention that the very idea of speculating on future clock speeds is in itself a complete waste of time. overclocking margin has very little relevance with the speeds of future steppings.

and besides, the real sin of that awful "review" is the complete omission of the phenom 2 940's price-matched competitor, the penryn 9400/9550. but then they pair that glaring mistake with these juicy quotes:

"No change here in Pov-RAY 3.7 either as the Phenom II 940 proves it's clearly capable of taking on Penryn." - which penryn? totally misleading.

"beats Intel's previous architecture Penryn at times clock for clock" - yeah, how would they know, they used a 2.5ghz penryn vs a 3ghz/2.8ghz phenom 2

call me a cynic but i get enough of misleading/bullshit benchmarks at work and trust me when i say that turd of a review is a particularly glaring example.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: Zap
Seems to me that the Phenom II is a greater improvement over the Phenom than the Core i7 was over a Core 2 Quad.

Of course, let's not forget that the C2Qs (at least the ones with decent multis) are stellar chips. Given that, however, I think you're right. I hope it's enough.

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

Originally posted by: xusaphiss
Come on, guys! I like a competitive market as much as the next guy but AMD is a whole generation behind. They should have had these when the 45nm C2s came out!

AMD is lapped!

It's time for them to die!
...
Intel and NVIDIA is not really receiving competition from AMD. AMD is just lowering standards.

Welcome to the AT forum. Now go away.

+1. Gadzooks, that's textbook threadcrapping.

Originally posted by: Idontcare
It still amazes me that a company can design/build a product as remarkable as PhII while operating in the business environment they have been under for the past decade. If anything it should shame a few Intel project managers for not having delivered even more than they have given the position of fiscal strength they have been operating from for the past decade. (although admittedly Intel did it with >50% GM's whereas AMD has been a non-profit entity for its operating lifetime)

PhII should not have even come close to yorkfield given the R&D $'s involved with the creation of these products...and yet there they are. To me that is simply amazing. Imagine if China or India had put a man on the moon 3-4 yrs after the USA did...sure the USA would have got there first but the real miracle was that much less fiscally endowed countries managed the same feat on nearly the same timeline.

+1

AMD earns my admiration. They know they're facing impossible odds, but they're still out there fighting. They've fixed the Phenom disaster. And Intel might not be so eager for a price war. Look at the financial projections they re-announced DOWNWARD. Intel doesn't want more erosion of their gross margins right now. Not after the worst quarter in their history. Intel's revenues are down 23%! Don't look for aggressive price cuts from Intel.

Originally posted by: Goty

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
Why didn't he run 2x2GB?

By Kyle's reasoning? Because "they've never done it that way". He still can't explain why, if the move to 4GB provides no performance advantage, he used 4GB of RAM in the QX9770 system and 6GB instead of 3GB in the i7 system.

You mean, Kyle's "reasoning?" I swear, that guy has no business setting up as an expert. He's a clown.

 

[JackyP]

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky

Originally posted by: Zap
Seems to me that the Phenom II is a greater improvement over the Phenom than the Core i7 was over a Core 2 Quad.

Of course, let's not forget that the C2Qs (at least the ones with decent multis) are stellar chips. Given that, however, I think you're right. I hope it's enough.

You couldn't be more mistaken, Nehalem is performing (or rather will be if it ever launches) more than stellar in the high margin server market and PII is <10% faster than PI while Nehalem is more than 10% faster clock for clock on average.

Originally posted by: Idontcare
It still amazes me that a company can design/build a product as remarkable as PhII while operating in the business environment they have been under for the past decade. If anything it should shame a few Intel project managers for not having delivered even more than they have given the position of fiscal strength they have been operating from for the past decade. (although admittedly Intel did it with >50% GM's whereas AMD has been a non-profit entity for its operating lifetime)

PhII should not have even come close to yorkfield given the R&D $'s involved with the creation of these products...and yet there they are. To me that is simply amazing. Imagine if China or India had put a man on the moon 3-4 yrs after the USA did...sure the USA would have got there first but the real miracle was that much less fiscally endowed countries managed the same feat on nearly the same timeline.

+1

AMD earns my admiration. They know they're facing impossible odds, but they're still out there fighting. They've fixed the Phenom disaster. And Intel might not be so eager for a price war. Look at the financial projections they re-announced DOWNWARD. Intel doesn't want more erosion of their gross margins right now. Not after the worst quarter in their history. Intel's revenues are down 23%! Don't look for aggressive price cuts from Intel.

Yes, AMD has earned at least some level of admiration, but Idontcare as an industry insider you should know that it is not that hard for them to keep up, because of diminishing returns. If they did it being profitable it would have been quite a feat.
Intel can invest all the money they want, 10 times the R&D won't give them 10 times the performance in any case. No comparison is ever fair, both companies' employees are probably doing their best and I'm assuming are the best in their respective fields.
Am I wrong?

 

[Fox5]

The Phenom 2's seem to compare more favorably when both platforms are using the same speed memory. I guess it's a fault of Phenom that it can't handle higher memory speeds, but it's interesting to see it become very competitive when slow memory is used, versus a repeat of Phenom 1 when Intel platforms are equipped with high end memory.

 

[Cogman]

Reviewing the reviews, if there is one thing AMD did right with phenom II it is the fact that they have competitively priced it. Finally, Intel will either have to issue a price cut or loose some of their mid-range to AMD.

The unfortunate trap that they are running into is the fact that to be competitive they had to raise their clock speed up (like intel did a few years back). They are going to have to recover some ground in the next few years, or they'll be in some big trouble.

Ultimately, I get the feeling that Phenom II is what Phenom I was supposed to be. Had AMD not sat back with their X2 series this whole situation might have been a different story. But hindsight is 20/20

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Fox5
The Phenom 2's seem to compare more favorably when both platforms are using the same speed memory. I guess it's a fault of Phenom that it can't handle higher memory speeds, but it's interesting to see it become very competitive when slow memory is used, versus a repeat of Phenom 1 when Intel platforms are equipped with high end memory.

Higher memory speeds though with higher memory latency.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Regs

Originally posted by: Fox5
The Phenom 2's seem to compare more favorably when both platforms are using the same speed memory. I guess it's a fault of Phenom that it can't handle higher memory speeds, but it's interesting to see it become very competitive when slow memory is used, versus a repeat of Phenom 1 when Intel platforms are equipped with high end memory.

Higher memory speeds though with higher memory latency.

The highest clock speeds offset the looser timings. Usually the looser timings only set back the memory half a speed grade to a speed grade in latency, but let you go two speed grades higher thus getting way more bandwidth and a bit better latency overall.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: JackyP
Yes, AMD has earned at least some level of admiration, but Idontcare as an industry insider you should know that it is not that hard for them to keep up, because of diminishing returns. If they did it being profitable it would have been quite a feat.
Intel can invest all the money they want, 10 times the R&D won't give them 10 times the performance in any case. No comparison is ever fair, both companies' employees are probably doing their best and I'm assuming are the best in their respective fields.
Am I wrong?

You are absolutely correct when you bring up the fact that diminishing returns in the pursuit of pushing the edge of technological capability will reduce the efficacy of larger and larger R&D budgets.

It is very much a similar (philosophically) situation as the single-core versus multi-core processor situation in that more and more cores will produce higher performance (to a peak, then it actually causes harm at some point) but with an ever reducing efficiency for each successively added processing core.

We could view Intel as having a multi-core R&D approach, and AMD not so much. So when both are attempting to optimize for a specific process technology or architecture asset they can come pretty close to one another's results in that singular item. But Intel gets to reap the rewards of having many more singular projects going on in parallel so the aggregate is predestined to be a superior product for the goal in mind (which for Intel is generally gross margins...even in P4 days the GM's held above 50% thanks to yield management and die-size management among 1000's of other things).

So yes 10x more R&D won't mean 10x more performance...but 10x more R&D can mean 10x more employees or 9x higher paid employees and with that elevated headcount (and cost structure) comes the expectation from shareholders that it is 10x and not 2x or 20x for some non-arbitrary damn good reason when it comes to future earnings and GM's.

In other words the burden of proof falls to Intel to demonstrate thru consistency of delivering on their product map as proof that they are optimizing/maximizing their position on the diminishing returns curve relative to maximizing shareholder returns.

Now when it comes to AMD and comparing to Intel in a "GM normalized comparison of the the efficacy of R&D budgets" there is an obvious disparity in the results. But this wasn't the case in my experience at Texas Instruments where our GM's were close(r) to Intel's despite our ~4x lower R&D budget. In this case it was always apparent to us (because employees migrate both directions, and invariably like to talk about the delta's in work environments) that we were literally running about 1/4 the number of fully funded projects in terms of parallel pathfinding and parallel integration projects for later downselection to the production-worthy process technology of choice.

It is a reality, 4x more R&D means 4x more parallel programs. Now we got lucky sometimes and our "1" program in a certain area (say strained silicon) happened to overlap Intel's project portfolio so we both ended up at the same endpoint albeit we spent say 1/4 as much getting there but there are other glaringly obvious cases where Intel spent the money and got better technology in exchange (for example their tungsten plug process is bar-none industry best, voidless and near seamless W plugs, pure beauty when seen in SEM xsection).

My point is really just this: Intel has no excuse not to succeed at every step, so no one really is surprised by their continued success, but AMD has every excuse for not succeeding and so we (being people who know enough about the industry to have educated opinions on these things, not we the ignorant masses on public forums) tend to have lowered expectations anyways and are always intrigued when they get 95% close to Intel versus 85 or 90% close to them.

I'm by no way discounting the hard work done by individuals at either company, Intel engineers and project managers work just as many hours and spend just as few days with their families as the AMD guys (judging by reports of friends who work at both). This is merely a "big picture" viewpoint I am expressing here.

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
AM3 denebs will probably net them maybe ~5% extra performance thanks to DDR3 and an increase in un-core frequency (NB/IMC/L3). Its strange to see the desktop PII only having a un-core frequency of 1.8Ghz where as the shanghai's are clocked at 2.2GHz.

Going by the scaling performance results from the tech-report review of both shanghai and deneb using two HPC programs (Euler3D and MyriMatch) it appears that the slower 1.8GHz L3$/NB clockspeed does not markedly reduce scaling performance for these 45nm chips:

The 2384 has 2.2GHz L3$/NB

The 2356 has 2.0GHz L3$/NB

The X4 940 has 1.8GHz L3$/NB

The X4 9950 has 2.0GHz L3$/NB

Stars Euler3D Scaling Graph

MyriMatch Proteomics Scaling Graph

These two cases obviously can't represent the entirety of applications that a desktop user will encounter, but the data here does support the notion that above some minimum threshold L3$ latency and bandwidth level (maybe around 1.6GHz?) the performance gains from additional bandwidth and latency reductions in the L3$/NB uncore are well into the saturated point of diminishing returns.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
There's nothing wrong with people saying that the Phenom 2 can compete with the i7 chips at a higher clockspeed. If the P2 can run at a higher clock, then great. It's not AMD's fault if the i7 can't hit 3.8ghz, and loses to a highly clocked P2 as a result.

Are you saying that you would complain if your $200 Phenom 2 could beat a $450 i7 after a simple overclock? I wouldn't.

no but a i7 after a simple overclock would wipe the floor on the PHII

this is what were trying to get at.

Can we just accept it? I7 is the TOP, there is no guy looking to tip the ladder on intel.

How come you guys just cant understand that?


There is no i7 comparision. Its like the cayotee vs road runner. No matter how far the cayotee thinks he is, the road runner is BEEP BEEP ahead.

PHII was after yorkfield. NOT BLOOMFIELD.
And GAINESTOWN.... oh boy... what do you think AMD has in prep of a 16 thread 8 core monster that out produces Intels current 16core Harpertown packages?

^ sorry.... AMD lost this one and not by a small margin either.

If you have a current AM2+ setup, then yes this chip will rock your world. Its a nice chip, and it will take you to where the yorkfield people have been dancing on.

If your looking to get this chip because you thought it was the fastest, umm... maybe next decade you'll get lucky with amd.

my friends who reviewed the chip even said in a non bais tone, its nice for the AM2+ people.
For us XS people, get an i7.

 

[nyker96]

I think many people here is disappointed by PII for not catching up to i7. But you have to keep in mind, AMD doesn't have the resources to do a quantum leap. only enough to keep making evolutionary changes. Like Anand's article said, the core itself did not receive too much tweak, there're still plenty they can improve. However, I am happy to see they improved the chip with about 15% boost from PI.

There're quite a few things AMD needs to hammer out, the new 45nm process. new cache structure etc. I think PII can be said to be a proof of concept on the 45nm process as well as their new cache system. If everything worked out well, they can put in more changes in later revisions of the core. You might be surprised to see how fast things can change. Like the HD3xxx was soso then after some tweaks HD4xxx became a hit. It always takes time to come up with a winning formula.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

no but a i7 after a simple overclock would wipe the floor on the PHII

this is what were trying to get at.

Can we just accept it? I7 is the TOP, there is no guy looking to tip the ladder on intel.

PHII was after yorkfield. NOT BLOOMFIELD.
And GAINESTOWN.... oh boy... what do you think AMD has in prep of a 16 thread 8 core monster that out produces Intels current 16core Harpertown packages?

^ sorry.... AMD lost this one and not by a small margin either.

If you have a current AM2+ setup, then yes this chip will rock your world. Its a nice chip, and it will take you to where the yorkfield people have been dancing on.

If your looking to get this chip because you thought it was the fastest, umm... maybe next decade you'll get lucky with amd.

my friends who reviewed the chip even said in a non bais tone, its nice for the AM2+ people.
For us XS people, get an i7.

Exactly. There's no use comparing a Ph2 with i7. Were I doing a new build, that's what I'd go for. I do hate the three-slot RAM limitations, though. 6 GB is pretty weak as a high-end complement. Hopefully the 4 GB stix will be out soon, if they aren't already.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
I do hate the three-slot RAM limitations, though. 6 GB is pretty weak as a high-end complement. Hopefully the 4 GB stix will be out soon, if they aren't already.

Why not populate all 6 slots on the x58 mobo's that have them? I know latency increases when doing so, but presumably you'd only put 12GB in your box because you have an application (or suite of them) that have performance improvements in going from 6GB to 12GB.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: nyker96
I think many people here is disappointed by PII for not catching up to i7. But you have to keep in mind, AMD doesn't have the resources to do a quantum leap. only enough to keep making evolutionary changes. Like Anand's article said, the core itself did not receive too much tweak, there're still plenty they can improve. However, I am happy to see they improved the chip with about 15% boost from PI.

There're quite a few things AMD needs to hammer out, the new 45nm process. new cache structure etc. I think PII can be said to be a proof of concept on the 45nm process as well as their new cache system. If everything worked out well, they can put in more changes in later revisions of the core. You might be surprised to see how fast things can change. Like the HD3xxx was soso then after some tweaks HD4xxx became a hit. It always takes time to come up with a winning formula.

I am perfectly satisfied with AMD here; they did everything I could have wanted-- provided a price-point match to the Q9550, which is more than enough processing power for everybody; including all of us gamers, for quite some time.

I can't wait to upgrade to an OC'd Q9550 (or maybe Q9650 depending on how much Intel drops prices), because then I'll have 8GB of RAM and about the only thing to upgrade from then on will be my graphics card for the next 5 years.