The Phenom II X4 810 & X3 720: AMD Gets DDR3 But Doesn't Need It

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Tom's Hardware PhII AM 3 Review


FiringSquad PhII AM 3 Review


PcPerspective PhII AM 3 Review


Hexus PhII AM 3 Review


Hot Hardware PhII AM 3 Review


Xibit Labs PhII AM 3 Review


ExtremeTech PhII AM 3 Review

Updated with a few new reviews I have run into.

 

[nOOky]

I would really love to see the AMD and Intel dual and quad core chips compared to each other with attainable overclocks. (i.e. on air and stock voltage) I am in the market for a new chip and mobo, and the new AMD's if anything will help bring prices down in the near future I hope...

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Xibit Labs PhII AM 3 Review

Cool, these guys did a nice heads-up comparison between the X4 910 (2.6GHz 6MB L3$) and the X4 810 (2.6GHz 4MB L3$).

Influence of L3 Cache Memory Size on Performance

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images...m-ii-x4-810/table2.png

The results of our test session show that cutting off one third of the L3 cache doesn?t slow Phenom II X4 down significantly. Phenom II X4 810 lost 2% on average to its ?fully-functional? counterpart. Even in the worst case scenario the performance difference never exceeded 5%.

So, it is quite logical that Phenom II X4 810 costs only $20 less than Phenom II X4 920. These two processors evidently don?t differ dramatically in their practical performance. And the major drawback of the junior model is not the smaller L3 cache, but lower clock frequency.

By the way, don?t forget that L3 cache memory of Phenom II X4 810 processor works at 200MHz higher frequency than the L3 cache of the top Phenom II X4 940 and 920 models. And it can be regarded as a compensation for smaller cache. As we have found out before, 200MHz frequency increase of the North Bridge built into the processor raises its performance by about 1.5%.

They also did a significantly better job at showing us the benefits of varying DDR2/DDR3 speeds and timings/latencies. (by significant I mean page after page of data with all the bench programs, its a must read)

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: soonerproud

Updated with a few new reviews I have run into.

Hey sooner, this lost circuits review is pretty decent too. http://www.lostcircuits.com/ma...k=view&id=54&Itemid=42

I like the efforts they go to for capturing performance/watt for some of the benches. Look at that idle power consumption in windows for the new AM3 chips!

 

[poohbear]

nobody seems interested in the phenom 2 710, which is a tri-core @ 2.6ghz and still retains 6mb L3 cache + 1.5mb L2 cache. It sells for $125!!! that's insane for a chip that can surpass an e8400 if overclocked a little AND has an extra core to boot. Fantastic!!!! any eta on it?

 

[perdomot]

The 720BE is the reason nobody is looking at the 710 model. An unlocked multi which seems to get to around 3.2-3.3Ghz on default voltage is awesome. Anyone know the official release date of the 720BE?

 

[Gikaseixas]

X3 720 is the star here, overclocks really well and fights against E8000 series in a series of benchmarks. At $145 it's a good choice.

 

[ElFenix]

the results seem strange. the 810 and 910 are all over the place in relation to each other, when the 810 is just a cut-down 910. at best the 810 should tie the 910, but beats it as often as not.

 

[imported_Scoop]

When they say 'AMD Gets DDR3 But Doesn't Need It', they mean an AMD setup with DDR3 just isn't worth it when you can get a better C2Q DDR2 setup for less. If you just have to go with DDR3 for some reason, go with Core i7.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
the results seem strange. the 810 and 910 are all over the place in relation to each other, when the 810 is just a cut-down 910. at best the 810 should tie the 910, but beats it as often as not.

Maybe there is some kind of corner-case prefetcher situation going on with the K10.5 architecture where for some applications that are guaranteed to have L3$ misses they are going to run faster on the 6MB L3$ because it spends less time trying to find data that simply isn't in the L3$ before it heads on over to the ram to fetch the data?

One of those situations where less cache means more performance unless you jump to the next larger increment of cache sizes and again manage to pre-fetch the needed data into the then larger L3$ delivering a higher hit-rate?

Originally posted by: Scoop
When they say 'AMD Gets DDR3 But Doesn't Need It', they mean an AMD setup with DDR3 just isn't worth it when you can get a better C2Q DDR2 setup for less. If you just have to go with DDR3 for some reason, go with Core i7.

That actually sounds quite reasonable. I had not thought of it that way, but I like your take on it better than my take. Thanks for sharing!

 

[ElFenix]

and then there are the 710 results, which beat the 910 results in all the gaming tests and beat the 810 in 3 of 4. the whole thing makes me