AMD's Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 23, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
It has taken AMD more than long enough, but the company is finally in a situation where its processors are competitive in the performance mainstream market segment. The Phenom II X4 955, 945/940 and the Phenom II X3 720 are all very competitive at their price points. Compared to the Core 2 Quad Q9550 the new X4 955 generally comes out ahead.
From a longevity standpoint, the AM3 platform is much wiser to invest in than LGA-775. Intel has already shown all of its cards there, and there aren't going to be any faster Core 2 Quads - just cheaper ones. By the end of this year Intel will begin transitioning to LGA-1156 and 775 will start fading away. By contrast, AMD's Socket-AM3 is going to be the flagship for the company for all of 2009 and it'll continue to live on into 2010. If you're choosing between Socket-AM3 and LGA-775, AMD has made that choice very easy - Phenom II is the way to go if you're concerned about a long term upgrade path, not to mention that the chips are generally cheaper than their Intel equivalents.
Where the situation gets tougher is when you look at the $245 Phenom II 955 vs. Intel's $284 Core i7-920. The i7 route costs you another ~$40 on the CPU and another $10 - $70 on the motherboard depending on what AM3 board you get for the 955. For around $100 extra you can go with an i7-920, which is anywhere from 0 - 40% faster than the Phenom II X4 955 depending on what application you're looking at. Now if you're budget constrained then the i7 isn't really an option, but as applications and workloads become more threaded the i7 could be a wiser long-term purchase.
The cheaper Phenom II parts, especially once you get down to the X3 720, don't really even touch the i7's price points so the comparison isn't really valid there. But the 955 is getting dangerously close to the cost of an entry level i7 platform, and if you don't already have an AM2+ motherboard the i7 may be worth considering. Especially now that DDR2 and DDR3 are much closer in price.
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poohbear - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
hey, is it safe to conclude that since farcry2 shows a 5% increase going from ddr3 1066 to ddr 3 1333 & another 4% going from ddr 3 1333 to ddr 1600, that overall it'd show a 9% increase switching from ddr1066 to ddr1600? that's quite a leap just based on memory!lopri - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
UnfortunatelySadly
Unlikely
Disappointing
Useless
Waste
Unpleasant
Painfully
Negligible
--
Luckily
Thankfully
Great
Possibility
Benefit
impressive
Once again
Surprise
Refreshing
Next up (my guess): SSD or Mac
aguilpa1 - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Unfortunately - at 3.2 it can't keep up with 2.66 i7Sadly - AMD needs new architecture
Unlikely - that it will happen soone
Disappointing - results even though quality is improving
Useless - to keep comparing the lates amd to intel
Waste - of article space for these comparisons
Unpleasant - to AMD fans
Painfully - obvious AMD is far behind
Negligible - improvements with new releases
--
Luckily - there are other articles to read
Thankfully - I don't own one of these chips or mobos
Great - bunch of useless data
Possibility - AMD may pull something actually new of these days
Benefit - of better pricing and competition
impressive - how I'm still finding things to write on this
Once again - I am bored by a Tom's article
Surprise - (sorry no surprises here)
Refreshing - my post has come to an end.
Nfarce - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Hahaha! I'm still waiting on the AMD whiners complaining of Anandtech anti-AMD bias every time Intel whips them.Nfarce - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Oh yeah, and the fact that a stock i7 has Turbo Mode is fair game. AMD needs to produce better than this. They own the mid-range GPU market with excellent cards like the HD 4870, but their processor development just - flat - needs - help.Procurion - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Not an issue-I own both AMD and Intel systems but am considering moving up from my 9950BE to the 955 and want to be sure of what I am buying before I spend my money. Some of us aren't as well versed as others in the finer points and that's what I thought the comments section was for.Procurion - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
I can understand some of your comments, but according to his data/listed values, the i7 920 is NOT running at stock speed. The frequency he lists is 2.8, NOT 2.66. What's up with that Anand? I can't see where you mention that your test was run with OC'd cpu's but the speed you list for the i7 920 is overclocked? It does skew the results if that is the case.Procurion - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
To clarify, the listed speeds for Sysmark, which would make the i7 part look much better than if you had run it at 2.66. To draw the conclusions at the end of your article without noting the difference(if there is one and it's not a typo) or justifying your conclusion with proper references of performance in 50% of your published tests is confusing to say the least. Can you clarify?Spacecomber - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
I'm guessing that he is showing the processor's actual speed during the test. The 2.8GHz speed likely is due to the i7's native ability to overclock itself via Turbo Mode (see page 4 of the article). In other words, the i7-920 dynamically has an actual clock speed up to 2.93GHz, depending on the application(s) running.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
woops, sorry for the confusion there, the i7-920 ran at its stock speed of 2.66GHz but Turbo Mode was enabled so it'll run as fast as 2.8GHz when more than one core is active.Take care,
Anand