Phenom 2 940 VS q9400?

[jeep11]

Which is better?

 

[loneninja]

Define better.
Phenom II is more power efficient while Idle.
Q9400 is more efficient under load.
Phenom II slightly out performs at stock clocks in most benchmarks.
Q9400 is just over 300Mhz slower, meaning its faster clock for clock.

I believe they both overclock 3.5Ghz+ as well. Phenom possibly overclocks higher due to unlocked multiplier.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Which is better?

Overall, I'd say the Phenom II 940 is the better choice.

- Price: about the same (Phenom II X4 920 is $275, C2Q Q9400 is $270)

- Performance: the Phenom is faster than the Q9400 at stock speeds but the Q9400 is a touch faster clock-for-clock.

- Power draw: Phenom is better at idle, Q9400 a bit better under full load

- Overclocking ability: about the same, both generally hit a little under 4.0 GHz. The Phenom does have an unlocked multiplier, which would make it a little easier to overclock than the Q9400.

- Motherboard selection: Depends. You can get a decent and reasonable-priced board for either. If you are getting a Q9400 or Phenom II X4 940, you're likely not going to be putting it with an IGP, and AMD's IGPs are much, much better than Intel's, so really no difference there. If you want to do CrossFire, AMD's chipsets are better at it for the same dollar than Intel's. if you want to do SLi, it's about the same as NVIDIA sells both AMD and Intel-compatible boards. AMD boards in general are a bit less expensive for the same feature set in most cases.

In the end, it's up to you and you won't do wrong with either, but I'd probably have to give the edge to AMD on this one.

 

[Ken168]

If you can wait for AM3 mobo (another month?), I will definitely go for PII mainly for future upgrade.

If you go with Q9400, chances are at the time you need an upgrade (2-3 years?) you may won't able to find any socket 775 cpu around while at the same time there should be AM3 cpu still.

I bought my socket 939 Athlon 64 when the Am2 socket was around the corner (wasn't aware of it). It is a pain as I couln't find any new CPU for upgrade when I needed it.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

^ I think AMD is going to delay the switch to DDR3 - apparently they are having trouble with the IMC, according to a Digitimes article. Might be next fall, and Intel is also alleged to be delaying their Core i5 until then as well.

 

[jed]

If you can wait for AM3 mobo (another month?), I will definitely go for PII mainly for future upgrade.

If you go with Q9400, chances are at the time you need an upgrade (2-3 years?) you may won't able to find any socket 775 cpu around while at the same time there should be AM3 cpu still.

I bought my socket 939 Athlon 64 when the Am2 socket was around the corner (wasn't aware of it). It is a pain as I couln't find any new CPU for upgrade when I needed it.

Why wait for AM3 when i7 is here now , and AM3 will cost about
the same as i7 and will not perform as well.

 

[pr2thej]

Well as the AMD CPU is already cheaper and the RAM will be the same ofc its down to the mobo producers...i cant see them making AM3 boards that pushes the price upto i7 levels.

Excellent skills there by the way, looking into the future and telling us how AM3 will perform....

 

[jed]

Well as the AMD CPU is already cheaper and the RAM will be the same ofc its down to the mobo producers...i cant see them making AM3 boards that pushes the price upto i7 levels.

Excellent skills there by the way, looking into the future and telling us how AM3 will perform....

now if AM3 perform like any of the phenom released as of late
i wouldn't be to enthusiastis about it.

 

[cjl]

Well as the AMD CPU is already cheaper and the RAM will be the same ofc its down to the mobo producers...i cant see them making AM3 boards that pushes the price upto i7 levels.

Excellent skills there by the way, looking into the future and telling us how AM3 will perform....

The Phenoms themselves aren't significantly cheaper than the low end i7. The motherboard cost is still somewhat up in the air, and the DDR3 cost will be the same. I wouldn't call that a significant price difference. As for how AM3 will perform? Do you really think that a slightly higher memory bandwidth will be enough to push the performance of the Phenom architecture up to i7 levels? It loses clock for clock on every single benchmark, and they both overclock roughly equally. Faster RAM will help, but it won't be a magical key to beating a superior architecture (especially as they already have pretty good memory bandwidth and latency with DDR2 on AM2+)

 

[boredatcanon]

It could be the boost needed to beat out york and kent though.

 

[jed]

Whats wrong with the phenom of late? It was designed to compete with C2Q and it certainly does that well. Its 10% faster than the Q6600 and is much more efficient because it offers more performance per watt.

Forget AM3, get a good AM2+ and a P2 940.
A current AM2+ P2 system would cost you about $300 less to build than a i7 system. The i7 system would perform about 18% faster but has a higher energy consumption cost in the long run.

What are you smoking, phenom II is not 10% better then the Q6600.
at the same clock speeds phenom II loses more then it win.
so clock for clock Q6600 is still better then phenom II, remember
the stock clock on the Q6600 is 2.4 while both phenoms 400 -
600Mhz higher, now when you run them at the same speed

 

[jed]

Whats wrong with the phenom of late? It was designed to compete with C2Q and it certainly does that well. Its 10% faster than the Q6600 and is much more efficient because it offers more performance per watt.

So intel must be very happy about the position it find
itself in with i7, it was designed to compete with the
AMD native core cpu's and completely thrashed them
to become #1 in native core cpu's.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Whats wrong with the phenom of late? It was designed to compete with C2Q and it certainly does that well. Its 10% faster than the Q6600 and is much more efficient because it offers more performance per watt.

So intel must be very happy about the position it find
itself in with i7, it was designed to compete with the
AMD native core cpu's and completely thrashed them
to become #1 in native core cpu's.

I'm sure Intel is happy with the Core i7's performance, but the real question is whether or not they are happy with the sales figures. If you make a great chip that outperforms everything else but price it way too high, people won't buy too many of them and you'll be SOL. Just ask anybody who used to work at DEC that one.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

The Q9400 is definitely better. It is clock for clock better and overclocks better. This means that the Q9400 at 2.6 Ghz is as fast as a Phenom 940 at 3.0 Ghz. If you put the Q9400 up to 3.0 Ghz it will win, and the Q9400 can easily do 3.8 Ghz while the Phenom 2 can barely do 3.6 Ghz. The Q9400 is cheaper and faster, it is better.

 

[jed]

[quoteI'm sure Intel is happy with the Core i7's performance, but the real question is whether or not they are happy with the sales figures. If you make a great chip that outperforms everything else but price it way too high, people won't buy too many of them and you'll be SOL. Just ask anybody who used to work at DEC that one.
][/quote]

Here in AZ. you can walk in fry's electronics and buy the
i7 920 for 229.99 so how is it priced to high, at that
price it's lower then both phenom II chips and out
perform both. so like i said intel must be very happy
in the position they find themselfs in #1.

 

[Just_An_Engineer]

Here in AZ. you can walk in fry's electronics and buy the
i7 920 for 229.99 so how is it priced to high, at that
price it's lower then both phenom II chips and out
perform both. so like i said intel must be very happy
in the position they find themselfs in #1.

I suspect that the $230 i7 must be with some kind of rebate as it is still priced at around $280-$290 everywhere else. Contrary to what you have been saying, if Intel actually did need to cut the price that significantly in order to sell the processors it is definitely not a good sign.

Nobody is disputing the fact that the i7's are great processors, but I doubt many would dispute that their sales have been hurt by the fact that their platform as a whole is rather expensive. While the i7 920 processor is priced around the same level as some C2Q's and Phenom II's, the fact remains that the i7 requires a $200+ motherboard while C2Q's and Phenom II's can both be run on sub-$100 motherboards.

 

[jed]

You get what you pay for, see i don't get this to expensive
nonsense back in the day's people would spend more money
for a system that performed half as good as an i7 system.
My first build cost me 1700.00 and my second 2200.00,
so for me 920 i7 system is pretty cheap for the performance.

 

[Just_An_Engineer]

You get what you pay for, see i don't get this to expensive
nonsense back in the day's people would spend more money
for a system that performed half as good as an i7 system.
My first build cost me 1700.00 and my second 2200.00,
so for me 920 i7 system is pretty cheap for the performance.

It's all a matter of perception. For the person building a performance rig i7 makes a lot of sense. However, for the person building a budget rig i7 doesn't make a lot of sense as you don't have any budget motherboards to chose from and there is no option of using cheaper memory. For me at least i7 would become a lot more attractive if they would offer some lower cost motherboards. I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not enthusiastic about having to pay over $200 for an i7 motherboard when I will likely never use the crossfire/SLI capability that make those boards so expensive.

 

[jed]

It's all a matter of perception. For the person building a performance rig i7 makes a lot of sense. However, for the person building a budget rig i7 doesn't make a lot of sense as you don't have any budget motherboards to chose from and there is no option of using cheaper memory. For me at least i7 would become a lot more attractive if they would offer some lower cost motherboards. I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not enthusiastic about having to pay over $200 for an i7 motherboard when I will likely never use the crossfire/SLI capability that make those boards so expensive.

For a basic system a Q9550 setup out performs any Amd system
you can put together.
1) clock for clock the Q9550 is a better chip, and cost about the same.
2) the overclock is about the same for both chips, so AMD loses that
one too because of the clock for clock. and at stock speeds the intel
cpu is better.
3) now as for 775 motherboards you can find them just as cheap as
any phenom motherboards.
so again how is the phenom II a better system over the intel one.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

I agree with Engineer. Unless you are spending over $1500-$2000 for a gaming PC then i7 does not make sense. The extra $200 that you can save could easily be crucial when it comes to the GPU(s) or the PSU. i7 is nice, but the performance increase over a Q9550 or equivalent C2Q is barely noticeable day to day and is totally unnoticeable without 3-4 GPUs in gaming.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

It's all a matter of perception. For the person building a performance rig i7 makes a lot of sense. However, for the person building a budget rig i7 doesn't make a lot of sense as you don't have any budget motherboards to chose from and there is no option of using cheaper memory. For me at least i7 would become a lot more attractive if they would offer some lower cost motherboards. I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not enthusiastic about having to pay over $200 for an i7 motherboard when I will likely never use the crossfire/SLI capability that make those boards so expensive.

For a basic system a Q9550 setup out performs any Amd system
you can put together.
1) clock for clock the Q9550 is a better chip, and cost about the same.
2) the overclock is about the same for both chips, so AMD loses that
one too because of the clock for clock. and at stock speeds the intel
cpu is better.
3) now as for 775 motherboards you can find them just as cheap as
any phenom motherboards.
so again how is the phenom II a better system over the intel one.

Your exactly right, Phenom 2 fails at anything other than an upgrade for a AM2+ board.

 

[Just_An_Engineer]

It's all a matter of perception. For the person building a performance rig i7 makes a lot of sense. However, for the person building a budget rig i7 doesn't make a lot of sense as you don't have any budget motherboards to chose from and there is no option of using cheaper memory. For me at least i7 would become a lot more attractive if they would offer some lower cost motherboards. I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not enthusiastic about having to pay over $200 for an i7 motherboard when I will likely never use the crossfire/SLI capability that make those boards so expensive.

For a basic system a Q9550 setup out performs any Amd system
you can put together.
1) clock for clock the Q9550 is a better chip, and cost about the same.
2) the overclock is about the same for both chips, so AMD loses that
one too because of the clock for clock. and at stock speeds the intel
cpu is better.
3) now as for 775 motherboards you can find them just as cheap as
any phenom motherboards.
so again how is the phenom II a better system over the intel one.

Did I miss something? When did I say I thought Phenom II was better than C2Q?

I'd say that both are viable options at this point. You are correct that a Q9550 system will be faster than a PhII 940 system, but it will also be more expensive even after the recent price cut based on processor cost alone. Whether or not the performance increase is worth the extra money is up to the person buying the hardware.

 

[Ken168]

I think when you comparing C2Q and PII, you should consider future upgrade.

2 years down the line, when you wish to upgrade, chances are socket 775 cpu will be hard to find while faster AM3 cpu should be still around.

Having said that, I can't make up my mind if I should wait for AM3 cpu or just go with i7 920. If I go with AM3 PII, chances are I can get a nice GPU with it while spending the same cash of i7 and still able to upgrade for faster cpu in the future.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Ken, either go with a good C2Q (Q9550) or i7. AM3 will have, at most, a 10% performance increase. I don't see that increase being anything more than the DDR3 controller or possible higher clock speeds.

 

[Malovane]

Just look how well the Phenom 940 does at high resolution/quality gaming:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-920-and-940-review-test/