AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 8, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Architecturally, Phenom II is what the original Phenom should have been. It's not cache starved, and while not as balanced as Core i7, it's a step in the right direction.
Compared to the Core 2 Quad Q9400, the Phenom II X4 940 is clearly the better pick. While it's not faster across the board, more often than not the 940 is equal to or faster than the Q9400. If Intel can drop the price of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 to the same price as the Phenom II X4 940 then the recommendation goes back to Intel. The Q9550 is generally faster than the 940, more overclockable at lower voltages, and a high enough default clock speed to keep you happy in the long run.
The same goes for the Phenom II X4 920 vs. Q9300/Q8200; AMD wins that comparison at the same price point. Compared to the Q9400, the Phenom II X4 920 falls behind. The Q9400 is the better buy of the two, but only if Intel does come through with rumored price cuts. We'll know for sure by the end of the month.
AMD also thankfully produced a good overclocker, at least with our review samples. The fact that we weren't able to overclock too high without increasing the core voltage is a testament to the early nature of AMD's 45nm process. Core i7, on the other hand, was basically able to reach maximum clock speed without so much as touching the voltage dials. Remember that Core i7 is Intel's second 45nm processor while Phenom II is AMD's first; it will only get better with time.
Looking through the performance results, it's also worthwhile to recognize just how fast Intel's Core i7 is. Across the board Core i7 is the fastest thing out there. If the motherboard guys could get X58 board pricing down below $200 and DDR3 memory was available at the same price as DDR2, then the i7-920 would be the clear recommendation. The entry-level Core i7 is pretty much faster than the-top end Core 2 Extreme or the Phenom II. When I originally reviewed Conroe I wrote that it was the world's fastest microprocessor; Core i7 continues to hang on to that title.
Despite Intel's strengths, AMD was able to do very well here today with Phenom II. Being able to have a CPU competitive with Penryn right out of the gates is worthy of a commendation. The scary part is that Intel could easily mitigate AMD's gains here with some simple price adjustments. Even more worrisome for AMD is that Phenom II is its only foot forward until 2011 when the first Bulldozer based CPUs arrive. There's headroom in AMD's 45nm process, but what happens when Core i7 goes mainstream? We must not forget that Phenom II is competitive with a 45nm derivative of a 2+ year old architecture.
If you have a Socket-AM2+ motherboard with BIOS support for Phenom II there's no question - Phenom II is the best upgrade path for you. If you are trying to build a new system from scratch, I'd suggest waiting for either the Socket-AM3 CPUs or see what Intel does with its pricing later this month.
Phenom II is AMD's return to competition, and unlike the best the original could do, the sequel is actually worthwhile. Even if Intel drops prices to maintain control of the quad-core market, you have AMD to thank for that. It's similar to what happened in the GPU market last summer: competition keeps prices in check. Economic woes or not, both AMD and Intel are going to be fighting hard for your business this year.
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TravisChen - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...What's the system configuration of the Power Consumption test and which software did you run for loading the system?
Clauzii - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
2009 is going to be very interesting for AMD. The foundry layoff should give them some air to breathe and concentrate on the CPU designs.Skobbolop - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
AM2 support sounds good, but as far i can see very few mobos with AM2 chipset acually supports phenom CPU's... too bad..i was hoping that i could upgrade with my MSI K9N Platinum.. :(.. this sucks..
Thorsson - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Performance isn't really any better, except in a couple of tests, than C2D chips that are 18 months old, so there's no reason to upgrade for a large chunk of us, and most of the rest will want i7.They need a top end chip that compares to the top end i7 like the 4870 was to the GT280. And this is some way from that. It's like the 4870 was competitive to the 9800GT, and was the same price as well.
With no upgrade path this looks like one strictly for the fanboys at the moment.
calyth - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
Ha. I'm not quite sure whether I hsould try to respond to this, but sure...It's a non-trivial task to completely redesign the cores themselves, and I'm not even sure whether they could, say cut out the core, and drop in a new one. It's easy for us sideliners to say they need to improve, and quick, but they need to design a new one that has a much better IPC, with speed, not haste.
How is this with no upgrade path? This provides an upgrade path for boards up to AM2, which is good enough. With the AM3 versions coming out, people could drop the AM3 version into an AM2/AM2+ board, wait if necessary until DDR3 prices falls some more, and swap to a newer board with DDR3. And now they've a spare computer.
Look at the i7 prices. Friend of mine just spent 2k for an i7. Sure, he's having fun compiling and playing games with impunity, but I don't think it's the best use of money. Also, C2D is dead. You can't put an i7 into and C2D board, and there's still a good amount of people with older boards that could have a drop in boost.
Atechie - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
If the CPU had been relased just after Core2, then it might have been a good CPU.But today, after 2 years, AMD's "native" quadcore still can beat the Core2 clock for clock...that is more than sad.
All Intel needs to do now is slash prices of Yorkfield until their i5 socket 1156 dualchannel DDR3 comes out, and they still got AMD by the balls.
To little, to hyped, to late...
Sunrise089 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
This is silly. If the CPU had come out in Summer '06, it would have been god-like. Quad core vs dual-core, higher clock speed, equal or better overclocking, very competitive clock-for-clock, and on a smaller and cooler process.What you could say was that if it came out right as Peryn launched it would be a close race...but Peryn improved lots of stuff over Conroe, so it isn't fair to say AMD is 2 years behind.
Denithor - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I think that's what Atechie's getting at. Intel took the right path by just cobbling together two dual-core processors to make a quad, while AMD spend excessive time and God only knows how much cash to develop a "monolithic" quad. Which then rolled over and played dead.Hopefully AMD has learned from its mistakes. Otherwise Intel may not have much competition in the near future. What's AMD trading at again, these days?
Proteusza - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I dont know, this doesnt do it for me. I'm a massive AMD fan - I run a 5600+ right now, my previous CPU was an XP 2400+.What is it now, 2 years since the Core 2 Duo was released? And AMD still cant match in clock for clock performance? After the monumental flop that was Phenom, massive delays, poor performance, high power consumption, the TLB bug, patchy backwards compatibility (my MSI K9N mobo with the Nforce 570 SLI chipset cant run AM2+ chips, but the equivalent Asus can), they launch the Phenom II, and the best I can say about it is that is that its acceptable. Acceptable. Not Phenomenal. Just acceptable. Price vs Performance wise, it gets the job done, mostly, sort of. Throw newer game engines at it and even the Q9600, that old workhouse, can beat it.
Its not that Phenom II is a terrible processor. Its not. Its just not what I expected AMD to launch, many months after the flop that was Phenom. I expected something that could at least beat a 65nm Core 2 Duo, if not a Nehalem.
As Anand hinted at, Intel is going to drop prices, which they can afford to, forcing AMD to do likewise, which they cant. AMD's die size is similar yet their margins are far smaller. Intel's next CPU will be the die shrink of Nehalem, what will AMD release? Will it even match Penryn? I can only hope.
KikassAssassin - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Since the Phenom II was always known to just be a die shrink with some optimizations, you were setting your hopes way too high if you thought it was going to compete directly with the i7. AMD needed this launch to keep them in the game, and it looks like it's probably just good enough to be able to do that. We probably won't be seeing any big breakthroughs from AMD until Bulldozer, so we just have to hope that this architecture will have enough headroom in it to last that long.