Phenom II X4 955: AMD's Dragon Platform Evolves
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Page 1:Introduction
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Page 2:AMD Phenom II X4 955: Finally, A Flagship
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Page 3:DDR2 Versus DDR3
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Page 4:Overdrive 3.0 And Another Acronym
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Page 5:Test Setup And Benchmarks
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Page 6:Benchmark Results: Synthetics
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Page 7:Benchmark Results: A/V Encoding
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Page 8:Benchmark Results: Productivity
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Page 9:Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2 And Stalker: Clear Sky
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Page 10:Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead, WiC, Grand Theft Auto 4
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Page 11:Power Consumption
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Page 12:Conclusion
Benchmark Results: Synthetics
From a price perspective, AMD seems to be aligning itself most closely with Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9550—a chip selling for $270 on Newegg. In PCMark’s overall suite score, that 2.83 GHz contender is able to slightly best AMD’s X4 955 in a fairly close match.
The Phenom II X4 940 trails a bit behind the X4 955, and the X3 720 drops off more significantly—the result of losing one core of compute muscle.
Both the Core i7 965 Extreme and Core i7 920 offer notable performance increases compared to the Q9550. And at $288, stepping up to the i7 920 looks like an advisable proposition.
Again, the Phenom II X4 955 comes close to Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9550, but falls just short. Given the $30 price difference, though, we’d expect this result. Of particular note are the CPU scores, which demonstrate the Core i7’s advantage in this synthetic test, even versus Intel’s own Core 2 micro-architecture.
Sandra 2009 employs new terminology for its arithmetic and multi-media benchmarks, measuring giga-instructions per second, giga-floating point operations per second, and mega-pixels per second (in addition to the gigabyte per second memory bandwidth test).
Immediately, we see the arithmetic prowess of Core i7. AMD’s Phenom II X4 demonstrates improved performance in the multi-media metric, standing up to the Core i7 920 without a problem.
Core i7’s triple-channel memory controller gives is a huge memory bandwidth advantage, but Phenom II’s integrated controller lets it move significantly more data per second than the Core 2 Quad’s MCH-based architecture. Most interesting is the Phenom II X4 940’s poor bandwidth, which is, in fact, repeatable.
- Introduction
- AMD Phenom II X4 955: Finally, A Flagship
- DDR2 Versus DDR3
- Overdrive 3.0 And Another Acronym
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Benchmark Results: A/V Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2 And Stalker: Clear Sky
- Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead, WiC, Grand Theft Auto 4
- Power Consumption
- Conclusion
Not fair. Don't compare open box prices to new prices. If you want to buy used/refurb/reconditioned/open box, then compare the prices against the same used/refurb/reconditioned/open box equivalent for the other platform. Otherwise, you are fudging your numbers.
Not to mention the six months on the market the other set up has had to drop in price ...
If it wasn't for that Nvidia issue with the i7 ...
Hell,
Nice processor, but until the price drop comes the only reason to buy it is if you're upgrading. If you're doing a clean sweep it's the i7 all the way.
Not fair. Don't compare open box prices to new prices. If you want to buy used/refurb/reconditioned/open box, then compare the prices against the same used/refurb/reconditioned/open box equivalent for the other platform. Otherwise, you are fudging your numbers.
Yeah that whole less than 10% behind the i7 920 is totally lagging and not close in performance... who writes this drivel?
For budget gamers? If someone is a addict to gaming (aka Gamer), they would probably spend a little more on the CPU and still get a good video card. Of course, on these games, you really dont need anything more than a 720 and a good video card, but there are more hardware intensive games than these.
Why,
Crysis is crazy GPU-bound. It doesn't add much useful data to a CPU review--expect to see it back in the graphics story I'm writing right now, though!
PI think I'll wait to take my AM2+ board into the realm of AM3 CPUs, specifically the 720 or 955, just a little while longer. Mind you, this is despite my X2 5000+ CPU bottleneck and knowing that any of these CPU's would offer a major performance increase. My biggest concern being whether or not the 920 and 940 are the final kings of AM2+, and that the 955 might be the king of AM3 for quite a long time, as well as what else a complete change to AM3 would bring (aside from DDR3).
I'm also concerned that perhaps in order to catch those i7 coattails (hopefully even surpass) I mentioned earlier, AMD has to give up on their easy transition from socket to socket approach and make a more significant change. Since you can only squeeze so much water out of a sponge before it's dry, I'm curious to know how much more water is left in AMD's AM2/2+/3 easy transition platform(s?) before it goes dry.
You'd be safe at least through the second half of 2010 (that's as far as the roadmaps shown to Tom's Hardware extend). At least into Q3, you're still looking at AM3.