Woooooahhh: new OFFICIAL PII speed record

[PaulieG]

It's how you look at it that makes the difference between saying that it sucks or that it's a good product.

They do overclock better than the first generation of Phenoms, the average 24/7 stable overclock on air with a Phenom II 920 / 940 will be at approx 3.75GHz, with some good chips reaching or even surpassing the 4GHz mark by a bit, and some "duds" stopping at 3.6GHz or so.
Unfortunately they're not on par with a Core i7 ( even with HyperThreading disabled ) on a clock per clock basis ( clock per clock = running both processors at the same operating frequency ).
They're also behind "Penryn" ( Q9450/Q9550/Q9650/QX9650/QX9770 ) on a clock per clock basis as well.

The average 24/7 stable overclock of the Q9450's is now around 3.8GHz, and you need a approx. 4.15GHz overclock on a Phenom II 920/940 to beat the Q9450 clocked at 3.8GHz.

If you're looking for the absolute performance in most applications and usage scenarios Intel remains the top dog in the desktop sector.

If you already have a AM2 based setup, upgrading to a Phenom II will give you a healthy boost in the CPU limited applications.

In the end it all depends on what you want, what you have, what are you going to run on the PC, and your budget for the build/upgrade.



January 8th, 2009



Of course it sucks, it's... em es eye :
Any news on grabbing a M3A79T Deluxe ?



I've got some info from a shop here, they told me that they'll be selling the new Phenom II's on the 28th of this month, "we don't know about the rest" they said, so I guess they're just going to ignore the embargo ( NDA ).

Maybe AMD decided to change the day the NDA will be lifted ?
Don't think so, but I'm going to double-check it tomorrow.

I'd love to have the NDA and release date confirmed. The dates are all over the place. My 940 is suppose to leave the factory on 12/27.

 

[Elementlmage]

Haven't checked that out yet.
We only had a wall-socket energy meter but I don't trust those, and even if they're very accurate it still doesn't show us the exact power consumption of a CPU to compare it with another.

I'll do some measurements when my new equipment arrives, that way we'll measure the power draw of the CPU only.



Forgot to mention that the Phenom II 920 will also be very competitive with the Q9450 as well.

I don't have a clear image on the pricing yet, but I'm hoping for something good

Sandra is a great little program that will give you benchmarks for just about any conceivable situation and will give you power consumption stats on individual components.

Also, I noticed that just about every program you listed was a benchmark. There are a few real programs that benefit from HT (3DS anyone?) but very few. For most normal situations HT cause more headache than benefit.

As well, the PIIs tend to have quite an advantage in apps that use a lot of multi-threaded FP calculations. GTA 4 makes some great uses of this(too bad it looks and plays like ass) and Phenom processors tend to vastly out perform Intel's quads(Even the suggested hardware on the back shows this.(Intel quad @ 2.4 GHz, AMD Tri-core @ 2.1 GHz) I kinda wish more games and apps would start using a parallelism scheme(SupCom comes to mind, 10k is nice... but not at 2 FPS), but then again if they did, Nvidia and ATI would put them out of business.

Meh, my 2 cents

 

[BenchZowner]

Sandra is a great little program that will give you benchmarks for just about any conceivable situation and will give you power consumption stats on individual components.

Sandra is a very very synthetic program, that gives you no valuable information regarding a CPU's performance at all mate.
Also the power consumption information is based on their own measurements and when overclocked they're just estimations ( that do not come close to the reality most of the times ).

Synthetic or non-synthetic a single benchmark/application will never ever give you the impression of a CPU's performance in real-life tasks and various applications and usage scenarios.

Judging a CPU's performance with Sandra is like saying "The Q9450 is better in 3D Mark Vantage than the Phenom II 920, so the Q9450 is a better cpu ( in overall )".

Also, I noticed that just about every program you listed was a benchmark. There are a few real programs that benefit from HT (3DS anyone?) but very few. For most normal situations HT cause more headache than benefit.

I listed some applications and benchmarks that most of you might've seen or even used in the past.
There are quite a few professional applications that are multi-threaded.
A lot of audio creation/editing applications, mixing application, audio & audio/video encoding/transcoding/editing tools, CAD & CAM applications, mathematics applications, physics ( science ) applications, server applications, etc.

As well, the PIIs tend to have quite an advantage in apps that use a lot of multi-threaded FP calculations. GTA 4 makes some great uses of this(too bad it looks and plays like ass) and Phenom processors tend to vastly out perform Intel's quads(Even the suggested hardware on the back shows this.(Intel quad @ 2.4 GHz, AMD Tri-core @ 2.1 GHz)

Actually the Core 2 Quads and the Core i7s are faster in GTA IV than the Phenoms ( both I & II ), and this game should NOT be mentioned at all as it is surely the worst port ever, with zero optimization and lots of bugs.
It's a resource monster for no obvious reason and without amazing graphics, effects or physics.

 

[Morgoth]

Neither has the i7...

did i said that? NO!

 

[Bytor]

did i said that? NO!

I know you didn't, I DID!!! lolz

 

[BenchZowner]

HTT ( HyperThreading Technology ) disabled to make things fair ( enable it, raise the DDR3 frequency and unleash the dragon...5k+ scores, but that wouldn't be so nice or fair for a clock per clock comparison )

 

[cdawall]

now thats what i wanted to see

 

[KBD]

so what does that test tell us? and what test is that?

 

[BenchZowner]

It's the compression ( archiving ) test from WinRAR.
It benchmarks the CPU in a real-life compression scenario and reports the average compression rates ( in KiloBytes per second ).

 

[Binge]

HTT ( HyperThreading Technology ) disabled to make things fair ( enable it, raise the DDR3 frequency and unleash the dragon...5k+ scores, but that wouldn't be so nice or fair for a clock per clock comparison )

That is a BS comparison.

The BCLK is different than the Core clock of the Phe II which is shown to diminish the results of i7 cpus... and the i7 is using less voltage. If you matched the BCLK to the Phe II core clock then I bet the i7 would be a lot further ahead.

 

[BenchZowner]

That is a BS comparison.

The BCLK is different than the Core clock of the Phe II which is shown to diminish the results of i7 cpus... and the i7 is using less voltage. If you matched the BCLK to the Phe II core clock then I bet the i7 would be ahead.

You seem to be a little bit confused mate.
First of all get your facts straight before calling someone's testing BS.

The BCLK a.k.a. base clock in simple is the main frequency that most parts on the board and the CPU base to reach their operating frequency with the help of the dividers/multipliers.
The BCLK isn't that much of a factor in terms of performance ( at least in a single socket LGA1366 platform ), and since we used a low HTT frequency on the Phenom II we decided to be fair and use a similarly low BCLK on the Core i7 as well.
HyperThreading is also disabled on the Core i7, because it would be unfair to set a battle between a CPU with virtually 8 cores against a 4 core CPU.

If you're looking for the max numbers and a "not so fair" comparison I can bombard you with 5k+ scores with a Core i7 easily, is that what you want ?

By the way, the Core i7 is already ahead, the top windows are from the Core i7 run and the bottom ones from the Phenom II.

If you didn't notice it's Compression Rate, higher rate = better.

 

[KBD]

It's the compression ( archiving ) test from WinRAR.
It benchmarks the CPU in a real-life compression scenario and reports the average compression rates ( in KiloBytes per second ).

ahh, thnx. heard about it but never actually seen it. i use Winrar to archive stuff all the time though, lol

looks like Phenom 2 is not that far behind, yay for AMD!

 

[Binge]

If you didn't notice it's Compression Rate, higher rate = better.

If you didn't notice I said the higher BCLK would have given a better win for the i7. From a personal buyer's standpoint, and an interested 3rd party I look at this and see BS. I've done personal tests and BCLK does make a difference no matter how diminutive from situation to situation. It's interesting that an i7 can match a Ph II while crippled with high multi/low voltage and beat it by a small margin, but I hope you can see where I'm coming from when I say they look more like different fruit now more than ever.

 

[Raiderman]

but I hope you can see where I'm coming from when I say they look more like different fruit now more than ever.

Like mango's and strawberries.... Thought I would say something other than apples and oranges.

 

[fullinfusion]

Dang i hope the Phenom II will be a sweet proc to own since the Core I7 is so fast. Hopefully AMD has got there sh^t together this time! and if not, i guess i better go for an Intel rig.

 

[KBD]

Dang i hope the Phenom II will be a sweet proc to own since the Core I7 is so fast. Hopefully AMD has got there sh^t together this time! and if not, i guess i better go for an Intel rig.

it is a sweet proc and by the looks of things AMD has made improvents to K10 but as far as getting their shit together i dont think so. First off, Deneb is arriving late in the game, it was really conceived to compete with Penryn but its getting late for that since i7 has been out already. Second, they need a new CPU architecture like ASAP, thats the only way the can compete with intel but it doesnt look like its gonna happen soon.

 

[HTC]

Dang i hope the Phenom II will be a sweet proc to own since the Core I7 is so fast. Hopefully AMD has got there sh^t together this time! and if not, i guess i better go for an Intel rig.

Apparently, AMD has lost the performance round BUT all isn't lost: if both price and power consumption are right, AMD can still make quite a profit, considering most PC owners go for low to mid range CPUs rather then high end CPUs, specially if you factor the cost of upgrading to an Deneb CPU VS an i7 one (board + ram).

 

[Raiderman]

If its a matter of a few fps in games or a few seconds longer to encode a dvd, WGAS... Phenom II will be a great chip. I am loving the way it is scaling..

BTW, WGAS=who gives a sh*t

 

[ascstinger]

That is a BS comparison.

The BCLK is different than the Core clock of the Phe II which is shown to diminish the results of i7 cpus... and the i7 is using less voltage. If you matched the BCLK to the Phe II core clock then I bet the i7 would be a lot further ahead.

remember, the i7 has a stock bclk of 133, while the pII's HTT is 200. neither really has been bumped up in that respect, and 200bclk is near to the limit of what you can expect from an i7, not exactly something that would be used to compare 2 slightly bumped cpu's.

I'll be picking a 940 up as it becomes more available, mostly because I dont even begin to tap into my qx6850's potential, which makes it quite hard to hang onto when I could use the money elsewhere

 

[BenchZowner]

ahh, thnx. heard about it but never actually seen it. i use Winrar to archive stuff all the time though, lol

looks like Phenom 2 is not that far behind, yay for AMD!

Well... if you turn on HyperThreading Technology on the Core i7 it scores 3243KB/s instead of 2289KB/s ( remember in the screenshot HT is off ).

That's a big difference, so no, AMD's Phenom II 9x0 isn't any close to Intel's Core i7, unless you're running your Core i7 with HyperThreading disabled.

If you didn't notice I said the higher BCLK would have given a better win for the i7.

First some common sense:

remember, the i7 has a stock bclk of 133, while the pII's HTT is 200. neither really has been bumped up in that respect

Thank you, finally somebody with common sense and understanding of the clock per clock testing process and scenario

If you didn't notice I said the higher BCLK would have given a better win for the i7.

Don't make me beat you with a stick of DDR3 RAM.
The gain from running a higher BCLK is the result of higher DDR3 clocks and higher QPI frequency, and not the BCLK itself.

I'm not your average joe in WinRAR testing, I've run, fiddled & tweaked that benchmark a million times

From a personal buyer's standpoint, and an interested 3rd party I look at this and see BS. I've done personal tests and BCLK does make a difference no matter how diminutive from situation to situation. It's interesting that an i7 can match a Ph II while crippled with high multi/low voltage and beat it by a small margin, but I hope you can see where I'm coming from when I say they look more like different fruit now more than ever.

First of all, if the CPU is stable at the given frequency, it doesn't matter if you feed it with 1.6V or 1.2V, the performance is and will be the same.
The performance gain from running a higher BCLK is originating from other stuff, check above this quote.

Dang i hope the Phenom II will be a sweet proc to own since the Core I7 is so fast. Hopefully AMD has got there sh^t together this time! and if not, i guess i better go for an Intel rig.

They're ( in most applications/scenarios ) faster than the Kentsfields ( Core 2 Quad series, Q6600, Q6700, QX6700, QX6800 ), and sometimes as fast as a Yorkfield ( Core 2 Quad series, Q9450, Q9550, Q9650, QX9650, QX9770 ), but the Yorkfield is faster in more tests than the Phenom II is.
The Core i7 is "untouchable" in nearly every single test ( with and without HyperThreading ).

it is a sweet proc and by the looks of things AMD has made improvents to K10 but as far as getting their shit together i dont think so. First off, Deneb is arriving late in the game, it was really conceived to compete with Penryn but its getting late for that since i7 has been out already. Second, they need a new CPU architecture like ASAP, thats the only way the can compete with intel but it doesnt look like its gonna happen soon.

It's not a bad processor, and is a worthy upgrade for people with AM2 boards and older processors.
Unfortunately it ain't the big bang that we were expecting and hoping to see.
But they don't really need a new architecture to catch up or even surpass Intel, they just need to enhance or redesign some portions of the CPU.

Apparently, AMD has lost the performance round BUT all isn't lost: if both price and power consumption are right, AMD can still make quite a profit, considering most PC owners go for low to mid range CPUs rather then high end CPUs, specially if you factor the cost of upgrading to an Deneb CPU VS an i7 one (board + ram).

It all depends on the pricing war with Intel's Penryn ( Core 2 Quad Q9450, Q9550, Q9650 ) processors to make the Phenom II a CPU worth choosing and upgrading to instead of going with Intel's LGA775 and a Core 2 Quad or the more expensive platform the LGA1366 & a Core i7.
On the other side, the launch of the LGA1156 "Lynnfield" processors isn't too far away, and there will be cheaper boards for the LGA1156 platform, and of course we already have some cheaper X58 LGA1366 boards on the way ( like the Asus P6T and a un-announced DFI DK board ).

remember, the i7 has a stock bclk of 133, while the pII's HTT is 200. neither really has been bumped up in that respect, and 200bclk is near to the limit of what you can expect from an i7, not exactly something that would be used to compare 2 slightly bumped cpu's.

 

[PaulieG]

That's the info I've been waiting for. I'm not sure how to feel this. I think I'll be waiting for more benchmarks, and compare it to the Q9450/Q9550 which is my price range. The new i7 is just beyond what I'm willing to spend on hardware, so it's basically irrelevant to me at this time. If it matches penryn clock for clock at a price tag of $275-$300, it seems to be an excellent performance to price product. It also seems that PII will give what PI never did, some real overclocking potential.

 

[HTC]

Question: does the AMD CPU catch up to i7 when OCed @ same speed, or does the i7 get farther ahead?

 

[PaulieG]

Hey BZ, lets see some higher clocks.

 

[BenchZowner]

Question: does the AMD CPU catch up to i7 when OCed @ same speed, or does the i7 get farther ahead?

The tests shown above are taken with both CPUs ( the Core i7 and the Phenom II ) at the same frequency, 3100MHz.

And the answer is no, it cannot catch up with the Core i7.
Even if you clock the Phenom II at 4GHz, a Core i7 at 3.5GHz will still be faster.

Hey BZ, lets see some higher clocks.

Sure

 

[Steevo]

The Phenom 2 did 33 MB in two seconds more than the i7 at only 30Mb. How exactly is that a fair benchmark?

2.3 Mbps i7
2.2 Mbps Phenom



100K difference per second standardized. Not much, a simple miscache by the CPU will have greater effects, and well within what a normal variance is.