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
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Now this is a tremendous victory for AMD. The Phenom II X4 940 doesn't break any performance records, nor can it outshine the Core i7 920, but what it does do is offer the same DivX encoding performance as Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9400. The cache and clock speed advantages are just too much for Intel's parts.
x264 HD Encode
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
The first pass of the x264 test is a very unique win for AMD; clock for clock it's faster than Penryn here. The trick is that the first pass of the x264 test is mostly an analysis pass, which really benefits from Phenom's integrated memory controller. It's an advantage that no amount of cache can overcome.
The second pass of the x264 encode is where the majority of the work gets done, hence the lower frame rates. The actual encode is happening here and the Phenom II X4 940 ties the performance of the Core 2 Quad Q9400. The same goes for the Phemom II X4 920 and the Q9300. The Q9550 and the Q9400 are faster than the 940 and 920 respectively, but Intel needs to reduce the pricing on both of those parts to remain competitive.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
Windows Media Encoder has always been an AMD favorite and Phenom II does extremely well here. Again, clock for clock we're at the same performance levels of Penryn, thanks to Phenom's IMC. The Phenom II X4 940 and 920 both outperform their price competitors; in fact, they both perform outside of their price class.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
Spoelie - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Only one little gripe: why was a mid-range motherboard used for the phenom while the intel processors got enthusiast versions?there IS a difference apparently: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/795/5/">http://www.legitreviews.com/article/795/5/
Not that it would change the conclusions.
melgross - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
"Not that it would change the conclusions. "You answered your question yourself.
duploxxx - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Nice review, always my firts site to read for a review. A bit basic on oc potential but you hint there is more to come, lets hope we don't have to wait another month like we had to wait for the 790GX board reviews.I don't see why AMD launched the unicore @1.8ghz.
You are stating that it is because of yields, might be but shanghai launched @2.0-2.2. Phenom2 would scale a lot better performance wise against penryn with a 2,2GHZ NB speed. for sure on the BE part that is a real advantage against the q9400-Q9550
Is this to give the am3+ an additional performance gain when launched? Retail chips hit NB speeds of 2,4-2,6 easy, they also showed up to 3.5-3.6ghz oc on stock vcore, your oc gain was real low, perhaps you show in future oc review what phenom can actually do.
no overview of total system power consumption idle and load?
ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Since most of the people have Intel now, it'll take them only a processor upgrade if they decided to buy a better Intel processor. But if they choose to switch to AMD, they'll have to buy the mobo as well.So for *most* people, getting a Q9400 (or Q9550 if the prices drop) will cost around $270, while getting a Phenom II 940 will cost around $470. And since this is the case for the majority, I don't see Phenom II being price competitive at all.
RadnorHarkonnen - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
There are more people with AM2+ Motherboards than you can think of.They may not spew they writings on the forums or comment actively saying "I'm upgrading!!!".
Units shipped, i would say you r are really short sighted. And the AMD2/AMD3 compatibility is great.
KikassAssassin - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Yeah, for people building new systems right now who don't want to spend the money on an expensive i7 mobo and DDR3, the Phenom II looks really nice. Intel probably isn't going to make any more LGA775 CPUs, whereas an AM2+ system might have more room for future upgrades with AM3 being backwards compatible.melgross - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
But if you do go the i7 route now, you won't have to upgrade for a longer time than if you go with Phenom 1. Overall costs over time will still be lower.melgross - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Oops! meant Phenom 11, or course. Anyway, the higher performance vs the price is worthwhile for many people.plonk420 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
ask Dark Shikari of x264 fame .. i'm sure he could tell you an approximation of Phenom's L3 cache latency... and possibly Phenom II latency soon.hameed - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
In the first table here http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... the percentages are hard to understand since they need to be flipped (i7 is before Quad) and btw in Cinebench the Quad advantage is 12.8% not 4.8% and the CS4 percentages are also not accurate.