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.
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ViRGE - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Those numbers are all correct, mate. I'm not sure why you'd be getting something different.Finally - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Seriously guys, you should check out the new hard disk technology by Seagate. New density record, already available.kknd1967 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I thought Q9450 should be better with larger cache?Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
In some of the tests the two will swap places simply because they run at the same clock speed and the added cache doesn't always help performance. In those cases if the Q9450 is behind it's most likely due to normal variation between test runs.Take care,
Anand
Goty - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
If I didn't have a 5000+ BE sitting in a K9A2 in my rig right now I probably wouldn't consider this CPU, but seeing as I do, it looks like I've found my next upgrade.kmmatney - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I was on a plane flying back from Taiwan (I work in the Fab industry) and I happened to sit next to an Intel employee who had traveled to Asia for the Core i7 launch. I asked him about the small L2 cache, and he explained that these run about 300 test applications, and chose the cache amounts based on a compromise between performance (and latency) and die size. We talked a bit and he asked me how I knew so much about computer hardware, and I mentioned I'm an avid Anandtech reader. He recognized the name, and mentioned that he saw Anand argue with one of his coworkers for quite some time about the L2 cache size!Zaitsev - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
That's a great story! I would love to see anand duking it out with some intel employees! LOLslayerized - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
AMD has indeed made some notable improvements with Phenom II and their 45nm. Reviews keep mentioning about how there is an upgrade option with Phenom II being AM2 compatible; however, what next (this is probably their last product with AM2 compatibility)? Shouldn't the reviews consider the upgrade options for Core i7/X58 with Westmere in a couple of years too? For someone who is considering a fresh build, I think that is something that should be analyzed too imo. Great review otherwise as always; the playing field if not leveled is at least starting to look competitive in a few segments!!Griswold - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
No. Facts and "might turn out that way in a few years" arent the same thing.san1s - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
still slower than core 2?