Phenom ii vs Athlon ii Quad Cores

Okey Dokey. The Phenom II x4 945 is better. First off, (obviously) the Phenom is running 100 MHz faster. Next, you are right - the Phenom II has L3 cache (6 mb) while the Athlon does not.

Basically Phenom II is a very high-end Athlon which gives you certain advantages. The Phenom II can deliver higher gaming performance, overclocking headroom, and can deal with intense workloads without breaking a sweat. If you plan on gaming, doing media creation, intense digital editing, or anything really cutting edge I would spend the extra forty or so dollars for the Phenom II, otherwise the Athlon II is a great CPU!

Sources: AMD, Newegg, years of experience, my brain, the voices in my head, my phenom II processor

^ What he said, however, there are three advantages that a athlon ii has on a phenom ii. First, It runs cooler than the phenom. Second, It generally uses less power. Third, Its cheaper.

In this case, the Athlon and the Phenom chosen but use the same power on average. Of course I don't know if alexfromarchitecture plans on OC'ing or if the Phenom II is the best fit. Overall, it is the "better" CPU in general.

I do not plan on overclocking it,

I just want a computer that can play high end games and SC2!  

Go for the Phenom II, especially if you don't plan on oc'ing.

+1 for phenom II.

If you were going to overclock, i would recommended the Athlon II's as there not much of a difference performance wise between them when there at the same GHz but scene your not overclocking, the higher GH'z Phenom II's will be better option.

I hate to belabor the point but my recommendation even though you don't plan to OC would still be Phenom II hands down for high-end gaming!  

warmon6, if the OP does plan to OC, I think the athlon 2 would be counter productive, because the higher the cpu frequency, the more prominent is that L3 cache.
I was wondering, instead of releasing the 1090t cpu, would it have been better to release a 6 core cpu with 9mb cache @ 2.8ghz for 250$? What I want to know is.......how practical is this thought. I mean, would increasing the L3 cache from 6 to 9 mb require a complete change in the cpu architecture? If it were really practical, what costs does it entail(not just $ but power,heat etc). Seeing, the atholon 2 vs phenom 2(635 vs 945 have same speeds,power and heat numbers), I think a cost of 50$ for 3 mb cache isnt impossible. Any idea? I wonder what performance numbers would this result.

Well for you're question about having more L3 cache in the x6's.

Really, the only reason why i think they couldn't add more is due to space. With jamming 2 extra cores on the 45mn process + the size of the die there able to work with, there isn't any room to add any more l3 cache. Now if you view the core i7 980x and 970, both hex cores like the phenom ii x6's but with the those i7's on the 32nm process, intel had the extra room to put 12MB of cache. Now if the die was larger for the cache (with a larger socket than am3 is) ,on the 32nm process, or both they could have the room on the die to add 9 to 12 mbs of cache.


As for the l3 cache and cpu speed. It's will really depend on what you're using that will make the L3 cache beneficial or not.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-l3-cache,241...

If you can use the l3 cache to the fullest, great!   Some apps/games like L4D saw a 20% boost in performance just from L3 cache on the phenom ii at the same GHz as the athlon II.

Although overall, most apps dont use the l3 cache to the fullest so the gains can be pretty minimal. So even with the l3 cache more prominent with cpu running at high speeds, if the program doesn't use it effectively, what gains would you really see?  

If the L3 was a little better used by more programs, i would recommend the Phenom ii's over the athlon II's a bit more but unless you're running something like cad, video rendering, ect (the only time i recommend the phenom ii's over the athlon and those would be the x6's), i just typically say get an athlonII and overclock.

Then again, that just my option and not the rest of community.   Everyone thinks differently.