AMD Phenom II X4: 45nm Benchmarked
Prices
Prices for the Phenom II fall into a fairly narrow range. For lots of 1,000, AMD will sell a Phenom II X4 940 running at 3.0 GHz for about $275 each, while the 200 MHz slower Phenom II X4 920 goes for $235 per unit. We also compared system costs for AMD and Intel builds as well.
System | AMD Phenom II | Intel Core i7 | Intel Core 2 Quad |
---|---|---|---|
Processor | Phenom X4 940: $275 | Core i7 920: $300 | Core 2 Quad Q6600: $190 |
Motherboard | MSI DKA790GX: $130 | Asus P6T: $249 | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P: $135 |
RAM | G.SKILL 4GB: $49 | G.SKILL 6GB: $144 | G.SKILL 4GB: $49 |
Overall | $454 | $693 | $374 |
A comparable Core 2 Quad Q6600 system from Intel costs about $80 less than a Phenom II system. But the Core i7 is no competition to the Phenom II in this price segment, thanks to the i7’s tri-channel DDR3 RAM and its still fairly expensive motherboards.
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firedogevan why focus on the q6600... wouldn't the q9550 or 9650 be a more accurate comparison given their respective locations in the product lineup?Reply -
dechy Yeah, the price comparison table should of included a Q9550, which costs same as i7 920 but with the lower mobo/ram combo price.Reply
Ends up being the same price as the AMD bundle, but with a good more performance... there goes the whole "AMD price/performance" aspect of this chip. -
one-shot Great review. Maybe some overclocking later? There were some pretty high claims about its overclocking potential. I'll wait for AM3 before I retire my E6750.Reply -
The Q9xxx series would trump the PhenomII in all the categories listed above. THG, it was downright *criminal* to have not included the Yorkfield chips in your performance per dollar and performance per watt analysis.Reply
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nashville hey bert/tom's:Reply
good write up: thought id comment on i7 watts:
"we measured the power consumption directly from the 12 volt rail that supplied the CPU", i read somewhere the only i7 core logic gets power from 12v rail, the uncore/cache part somewhere else. if this is true, you going to do another measurements? -
kirvinb I'm so happy to see Intel has some competetion. While these new processors are not mind blowing, they offer some decent performance at the price given. I am sure this will lower the price of the q9400 and q9550, which is exactly what I want to see. Maybe even the i7s price will lower and maybe we will be back in the good days..where intel and amd flipped sides of the powerhouse like every 6 months..!! Good Write Up..Reply -
jj463rd On the forums someone mentioned "why did they use DDR2-800 RAM when DDR2-1066 would give better performance for the Phenom II".Wouldn't this skew the benchmarks by a little bit (perhaps 2 to 3%)?Reply