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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Procurion - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Cool. My next question would be to wonder why it didn't kick in for the other tests? I guess it wasn't enabled for them? Looks good overall.JarredWalton - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
See page 4 - Turbo mode tends to activate pretty much any time a load is on the CPU. But it's not really "unfair" as all i7 users get that benefit without doing anything extra, plus i7 chips still overclock far beyond that point.ChemicalAffinity - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Best post ever.whatthehey - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Congratulations on the cryptic post... or is that pointless post? I'm guessing you're suggesting that the words listed were used with two different companies - AMD and Intel - but if so they certainly weren't used in this article in any way I can see. Care to enlighten the rest of us on the point of your comment?Some people are too clever for their own good; others merely think they're clever. Guess which one you are.
Lokinhow - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Oh man, I thinking about the OC3.9GHz on Vista x64
4.2GHz on Vista x86
Why it happens?
Does the results are the same using XP x86/x64 and Windows 7 x86/x64?
That would be interesting to see if it is possible to reach 4.2GHz on Windows 7 x64
Griswold - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Dont hold your breath. Theres more registers (etc) in use under a 64bit OS than a 32bit one. Its highly unlikely that there will be any difference on the exact same hardware. And even if there is a difference between xp/vista/7, 32bit 7 will outdo 64bit 7 as well. 64bit was never the ideal choice for overclocking records...Spoelie - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
In the CS4 test, given the large increase in performance when just going from DDR2 to DDR3, would a faster NB clock (2->2.6/2.8ghz) and faster than DDR1333 memory, while keeping the core at default clock, level the playing field with the core2 processors?Seems that in this particular test the phenom is starved for data.
duploxxx - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
why do you use these 1GB dimm's in ddr3 config? I would assume you have more oc issues with 4 dimms in stead off 2 dimms?G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12)
G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15)
Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
Holly - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Nice article :-)btw... last paragraph on the first page... "faster than the Core 2 Duo Q9550." should say "faster than the Core 2 Quad Q9550."
ibm386 - Sunday, June 27, 2010 - link
Intel and Amd are owned by the same person. Since a person can't have monoply in U.S. It has been divided into two different names and obviously diff. CEOs.cheers.