Does AMD's new Phenom II get you all excited?

I'm not going to make excuses but I've been an AMD user for a good portion of my life and their chips have served me well which is why I just recently picked up a 920. With that being said, AMD chips are not bad at all. People just like to exaggerate the differences. Yes, they are inferior to Intel chips, sometimes by a lot, but overall they're still solid chips that are good at what they do.

[I.R.A]_FBi said:

I grasp the economics of competition, If the roles were reversed the current situation would still be applicable ... but even then, why the excuses?

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Excuses make something lousy seem good "enough", with which one can still make ends meat.

BazookaJoe said:

I have a Q6600 - and NO specific fanboi disorder relating to brands.
I just want the best chip for my money.. and I STILL out-bench ANYTHING that has been posted regarding the new PhX4's... (Running in NORMAL home usage, non nitrogen based systems)
All I see is that the BRAND NEW PhX4 - cant even MATCH the performance of a 3 year old Intel chip under actual real world conditions.
YES my Q6600 is overclocked... but not by much.. and running on standard NON heatpipe zalman air cooling..

Click to expand...

Not sure about that, Q6600 didn't outrun the Phenom 9950 BE by much, if at all. The new Phenom IIs are in a different league from the Q6600s, look at any benchmark after the official release, not the previews, and you'll see that the Q6600s cannot even compete with the Phenom II 920 when they are clocked at the same speed.

BazookaJoe said:

But basically this tells me that the "NEW" PhX4 cant even MATCH a 3 year old Intel design (that is cheaper now anyway)- so I don't see what the big deal is.

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Well the Phenom 9950 BE matched it!

BazookaJoe said:

And I'm not flapping fanboi nonsense , I HAVE the 3 year old Intel chip that kicks the PhX4's ass to prove it- anyone is welcome to come bench my PC themselves if they don't believe me.

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I would love to see those benchmarks please, since you so kindly offered.

BazookaJoe said:

EDIT : So basically anyone on earth who has purchased a high end Intel in the last 2 years would be wasting their time and money with the PhX4... The only ppl who stand to gain from the PhX4 are ppl who originally purchased low end / Budget pc's in the first place (AMD OR Intel) and are now raving that a new top end CPU is SO great... WELL OF CORSE IT IS, if you cheaped out in the first place?!

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Phenom II is for people who have AM2+ motherboards already and want a upgrade path for an Intel Q9xxx equivalent performance. It was not suppose to be a i7 killer as AMD already said over a year ago.

this still ..... picard.jpg

let them have there Phenom FAIL.

mtosev said:

let them have there Phenom FAIL.

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Explain yourself with full sentences. Most of us would rather a "Phenom fail" opposed to your "Intel Pentium 4 3.20E S478 Prescott"

lol

haha pwnd

Darren said:

Explain yourself with full sentences. Most of us would rather a "Phenom fail" opposed to your "Intel Pentium 4 3.20E S478 Prescott"

lol

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old system. i have a E6600, 2gb GSkill (Micron chips) cl4, P5W DH Deluxe, X1650 pro,...

Darren said:

Most of us would rather a "Phenom fail" opposed to your "Intel E6600"


Seriously though I would like to hear your agument against the new Phenom IIs, what didn't impress you and what did

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i don't need/want a cpu that costs 15% less then a i7 and is on average 25% slower, intel has triple channel mem, intel chipsets are 99.9% stable. a fact is that intel chipsets are the least problematic.

Darren said:

I would love to see those benchmarks please, since you so kindly offered.

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read this

EDIT: nvm it was this one
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translat...p?t=3253&garpg=32&lp=el_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

q6600 is pretty even if not slightly ahead of phenom II. i picked that review because all cpus are clocked the same and there's a huge variety of programs used

mtosev,

There is some truth to those claims, most of them have been addressed and dismissed already, but I'll run through some of the Phenom II counter arguments which might help make it clear.

mtosev said:

i don't need/want a cpu that costs 15% less then a i7

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I'm not sure about in the US but here in the UK the i7 940 costs between 50%-60% more than the Phenom II 940 (CPU alone)


Intel Core i7 940 2.93Ghz £448.49 inc VAT

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 940 £195.49 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-254-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-236-AM


Also DDR3 cost way more than DDR2, for the cost of 4 GBs of generic DDR3 I can get 16 GBS of premium DDR2.

The cost of i7 motherboards are about £200, opposed to a suitable AM2/AM2+ motherboard costing around £40

Once you factor in the cost of i7s blatantly more expensive CPU, motherboard and memory the build works out way more than 15%

mtosev said:

i7 and is on average 25% slower, intel has triple channel mem,.

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That is subjective, depending on what applications you run, some applications the Phenom II runs better, some applications the i7 runs better, to say 25% is an exaggeration, the new i7 is barely faster than the Intel Q9xxx series. You say Intel has "Triple" memory, so what AMD have "Quad" memory. There is been little evidence to suggest that three memory sticks perform better than four.

To be honest AMD have already said the Phenom IIs are reserved to compete with the Intel Q9xxx series, so us comparing it to the i7 knowing this fact is just silly.

i7 920: 255Eur
phenom ii 920: 216Eur

"so us comparing it to the i7 knowing this fact is just silly."

no it isn't. phenom ii like i7 are TOP products from intel and amd so you can compare them.

mtosev said:

i7 920: 255Eur
phenom ii 920: 216Eur

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Well like I said, I gave you the cost of UK prices, alot of American here have worked out that in the US as well in the UK the Phenom II works out cheaper for new builds. How much is the average i7 motherboard, how much is the average DDR3 memory sticks in comparison to AM2+ motherboards and DDR2 sticks.

You were quick to state the CPU prices but reluctant to tell us the I7 motherboard and DDR3 prices

mtosev said:

no it isn't. phenom ii like i7 are TOP products from intel and amd so you can compare them

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Its silly because when AMD announced the Phenom II over a year ago they said prior that it wasn't suppose to compete with the i7, this was said and understood. AMD were operating a year behind because of the original Phenoms having the L3 bug, they had to do a big recall on stock, so they made a decision (over a year ago) that they will compete with price with the Phenom II with Q9xxx performance and near i7 performance depending on applications used.

AMD is planning a different architecture on their AM3 motherboards which will compete with the i7.

yup and people have a chance to get screwed as they did already got screwed when amd said phenom cpus will work on AM2 motherboards. and we know what happened. most motherboard makers didn't release bioses that whould support phenoms. amd is also to blame for this if they say it will work with am2 motherboards and if it doesn't work that not the buyers problem. if amd has no control over it's partners (mobo manufactures) that's there problem.

mtosev said:

yup and people have a chance to get screwed as they did already get screwed when amd said phenom cpus will work on AM2 motherboards. and we now what happened. most motherboard makers didn't release bioses that whould support phenoms. amd is also to blame for this if they say it will work with am2 motherboards and if it doesn't work that not the buyers problem. if amd has no control over it's partners (mobo manufactures) that's there problem.

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The bottom line is even if you had to buy a new AM2+ compatible motherboard it will still be £150-200 cheaper than a i7 board.

The Phenoms have only been out 2 weeks (in the UK), I think we need to give more than 2 weeks before we can criticise them. Alot of motherboard manufacturers have released a bios, go to any vendor, MSI, ASUS etc they have a huge list of compatible AM2/AM2+ bios' that are AM3 ready, they are adding to the list almost daily. Some people have tried the Phenom IIs with a non-compatible bios and in some cases still work fine

3xploit,

3xploit said:

read this

EDIT: nvm it was this one
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translat...p?t=3253&garpg=32&lp=el_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

q6600 is pretty even if not slightly ahead of phenom II. i picked that review because all cpus are clocked the same and there's a huge variety of programs used

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Indeed, according to those benchmarks you are correct.

However, we have to remember these benchmarks are "preview" teaser benchmarks probably used with Engineering samples, they don't even explain the testing conditions. It was an interesting read although I must admit I read it already almost a month ago.

If we could agree that the E8400s architecture is better than the Q6600s architecture clock for clock, we can establish that the E8400 is slower than the Phenom II 940 despite running at the same clock speed of 3GHz. If this is true, the Q6600 is definitely slower than the Phenom II 940 clock for clock

Time For A New Poll Plz

And to reply to Darren's request for results : And to respond to the "wPrime" results from article "First AMD Benchmarks With DDR3 Memory Posted"

http://www.techpowerup.com/82978/First_AMD_Benchmarks_With_DDR3_Memory_Posted.html

The NEW Phenom II X4 910 At 3.1Ghz (DDR3) 32M = 46.6 seconds (Using a large heatpipe air cooler)
My OLD core 2 Duo Q6600 at 3.1Ghz (DDR2) 32M = 15.4 seconds (Using a CHEAP non-heatpipe air cooler)

(EDIT : Some Ppl are saying that wPrime was only testing ONE of the cores on the Ph2X4 - I HOPE THIS IS SO because if it is not, then this result is awful... (And if it IS then please ignore my rantings beyond this point, as that IS a reasonable result for a single core...))

PS I was running VM's during the wPrime test as well as my firewalls, antivirus, mail server, and firefox - and the test X4 at toms hardware was a stripped clean boot....

Heck... If that's not a total ass whooping I don't know what is. The MAJOR factor of my argument being that building an old Q6600 system NOW is way cheaper than building a NEW X4 system NOW - WHY would ppl be so exited about paying MORE for a 46 second PC when a 15 sec pc is cheaper?

At any rate, that's what you get for arguing with fanbois. PLEASE can we have a new poll this one is almost 2 months old - and slightly pointless given any proper benchmarking of older less expensive systems.

Darren said:

The bottom line is even if you had to buy a new AM2+ compatible motherboard it will still be £150-200 cheaper than a i7 board.

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Yes this is true but you fail to see that the Phenom II 920 is = to the Q9400 and the Q9400 and mobo's for the LGA775 are just as cheap and the chips for them are just as cheap as well . In fact you can build a faster Q9400 system for much less than a Phenom II 920 and you also have better upgrading with the Intel system where as with the Phenom II there is the 920 and 940 and that is all you get . With Intel you get the Q9400 , Q9550 , Q9650 , QX9650 and if you feel like it the QX9770 . So we know that there are more choices with the Intel set up and we know that the Intel setup is also cheaper in terms of = performance , what the logical fail to see is the DEAD end AMD leads you to when you buy there setup . Yes they are very nice and OC like mad and they are very fast but for all there speed and all there overclocking you are limited to only 2 Phenom II 's and once you step up to i7 there is nothing that is compared to you at all . the i7 is much faster much better and in a class all by it's self this is why it cost's more . you do not step into a Volkswagen dealership expecting to get a Porsche now do you ?

No The Phenom II did not and has not gotten me excited not at all . Sorry .

as ive mentioned in other threads- i have nothing against intel- but most of the intel experiences ive had were not good ones-

in this line of work two rules come first-

1. our equipment goes on the road everyday-so full stability is a must- sometimes its rented by people that dont know how to run a computer let alone a lighting or large outdoor pa system- i can power up anything from a bathroom to a footbal stadium and if i have to pay more than 1000$ for a computer then its a high risk- so air cooling and cost effective computers in full steel cases are a must-
dont even mention see thru cases-or laptops

its not so bad now, but back in the heyday of the athlon xp- try running 3 or four desktops and 8 apps on the average prescott that would only hold a gig of ram- most of em froze up when youd play the first song or hit the dmx lighting software-

amd's have proven themselves as the ones that bring home the checks-everyday- day after day- my favorite backup computer is my old socket a barton- that one almost rebuilt my whole company singlehandedly, and made me more money than any piece of equipment overall i ever owned.

2. support and upgrades- go into intel's driver site and find me a recent driver update for a 2003 or 2004 build- its virtually non existent- i may not know a lot about OC'ing but i do keep update with all the windows bugs and fixes- i can go to ati or amd and find drivers and software less than a year old for a 7 year old rig right now- the support and constant improvement of their older products in the marketplace proves to me they are definitely interested in long term customer relationships and work to backup thier products-

if you dont believe that go to the knowledgbase and see what whitepapers you can find on the K6 or some of the early ATI platforms-then tell me about support for your kid's pentium 1

another one while i rant here a bit is VIA- heres a company that built a unified driver structure for all of thier chipsets- ok so the S3 isnt all the flashy and the site is not the most navigable,but they only have two chipset drivers for everything they ever built, and how many of you got started with your first HP or cyberpower Asus powered AMD-Via platform motherboard? how many of you still have one in the basement?

you can still get recent updates and bugfixes for it cause i re did one for one of my employees parents just last week- installed a new HD, some added ram and re did the OS and it still runs like the day it was built- not all pretty flash and boom but still hangin tough for basic stuff everyday.

thats why i claim the nickname of the "big green team linebacker" big green has made a lot of green for me- so phenom II? you bet- droolin and hoping- ill have my next one in about two weeks. yeah i cant wait

Meh is all I can say. I don't hate them, or think they are bad, but they aren't exciting at all. We've already had this level of performance from Intel for 2 years now.

I have to add this story - and this one is a standout in my mind especially after seeing all the flack about the q6600-

benchmarks and games are all good to the home user and system builder but for those of us that make our living using the stuff we build, this is where the rubber meets the road-

back in late july this year at a festival in milwaukee Wi, myself and two other sound and light companies teamed up on an all day outdoor show in a stadium to do a 7 band event.

behind the scene with the rest of the equipment were 3 Q6600 powered intel rigs- one tied to the yamaha digital audio console for sampling and other audio related chores and two more that ran the lighting and the backdrop video onstage. it was about 98 degrees in the shade and we were in a tarp covered booth in the middle of the stadium on a riser. all morning long during the soundcheck everything was going well and my buddy was bragging about his latest intel beasts and all that- by 6pm that afternoon after fighting lockups and overheats we had to switch out the q6600 on the yamaha cause it kept doing stupid stuff.

i had three computers in my van and grabbed the first one within reach- a Machspeed mobo with an amd black box 5000 and 2 gig of ram, and we ran the software into the geforce6100- and away we went- no more problems there.

darkness came and 20 minutes after the lights came up we lost all the lights and the backdrop video display. smoke was pouring out of one of the intel builds so i grabbed one thats a virtual clone of the one im on now that already had the dmx lighting and software in it and the same video software-the only thing was- this one was brand new- only had four gb of ram and the amd 9550- it had never been run for a show, and replaced BOTH of the two q6600's- we ran the hell out of that rig the rest of the night til about 1 am with absolutely no problems at all- it was bad enough that my buddy lost three computers that day but to have two smaller lower powered amd horses behind it all was the kicker for him.

just 1 of the intels cost him more to build than both of mine combined.

now he owns all amd powered products- as for me- ill trade multitasking horsepower for speed any day of the week, especially if its cost efficiant-because the horsepower brought the show, and the check home that night when it was done- having a computer crash is one thing- having it stop a show with 40,000 fans in the stadium can cost you dearly the next year if you dont get that contract back.

yeah we sellout-every seat- every show- powered by amd & ati everyday.

Great stories and all that but some thing just doesn't add up to me . Some thing tells me you had not set them up right at all . Look at my sig MY Q6600 is smokin fast and sick reliable !

I think that AMD is a great setup and all to go with no doubt about it , I think that any one would surly get there moneys worth but to rant about how bad Intel is / was is not really going to convince the millions of Intel users that you are right . Sounds as if you have a grudge against Intel . I can only say for me that if you look at 3 things while building your computers then Intel ( ATT ) is the only viable way to go . Price / Performance / upgradeability . Now as far as I see it if you have a Intel LGA775 keep it just upgrade the CPU's . If you have an AM2 / AM2+ mobo keep it and just upgrade . If you are looking for extreme performance eye popping speed and just some thing in a class all by it's self then i7 is the only way to go .
AMD will WOW me soon I just did not get the WOW from AMD with the Phenom II .

madmanjohn, fantastic story. You've got an interesting job, do you get groupies in your line of work?

BazookaJoe said:

And to reply to Darren's request for results : And to respond to the "wPrime" results from article "First AMD Benchmarks With DDR3 Memory Posted"

http://www.techpowerup.com/82978/First_AMD_Benchmarks_With_DDR3_Memory_Posted.html

The NEW Phenom II X4 910 At 3.1Ghz (DDR3) 32M = 46.6 seconds (Using a large heatpipe air cooler)
My OLD core 2 Duo Q6600 at 3.1Ghz (DDR2) 32M = 15.4 seconds (Using a CHEAP non-heatpipe air cooler)

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BazookaJoe, I'm not too fond of that review its obviously dodgy look at these statistics from the TPU official WPrime thread.

LeMoose - Phenom 9950 3009 MHz – 12.719
ntdouglas - Core 2 Quad Q6600 - 3204 MHz - 12.919

As one can see although the Phenom 9950 is clocked lower than the Q6600 the Phenom 9950 was able to attain a faster speed.

Also

fatguy1992 - Core 2 Quad Q6600 4005 MHz - 10.249
Kei – Phenom II 920 3780 MHz – 9.747

Although the Q6600 was clocked at over 4GHz it was unable to compete with the Phenom II which was clocked at only 3780Mhz

This proves that even if the Q6600 is overclocked to match the Phenom IIs clock speed or even if the Q6600 is overclocked higher than the Phenom II, the Phenom II has the advantage in Wprime.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=77369

BazookaJoe said:

Heck... If that's not a total ass whooping I don't know what is. The MAJOR factor of my argument being that building an old Q6600 system NOW is way cheaper than building a NEW X4 system NOW - WHY would ppl be so exited about paying MORE for a 46 second PC when a 15 sec pc is cheaper?

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Not sure how to respond to that considering that TPUs results show the Q6600 is slower than the old Phenoms and the new Phenoms in Wprime. The old Phenom 9950 is cheaper than the Q6600 in the UK.

trickson said:

but some thing just doesn't add up to me . Some thing tells me you had not set them up right at all . Look at my sig MY Q6600 is smokin fast and sick reliable !

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madmanjohn's Q6600 was in a unique situation, he was operating his computer outside in rough conditions, 98 degrees in the shade. I doubt your bedroom or office is that hot.

madmanjohn said:

I have to add this story - and this one is a standout in my mind especially after seeing all the flack about the q6600-

benchmarks and games are all good to the home user and system builder but for those of us that make our living using the stuff we build, this is where the rubber meets the road-

back in late july this year at a festival in milwaukee Wi, myself and two other sound and light companies teamed up on an all day outdoor show in a stadium to do a 7 band event.

behind the scene with the rest of the equipment were 3 Q6600 powered intel rigs- one tied to the yamaha digital audio console for sampling and other audio related chores and two more that ran the lighting and the backdrop video onstage. it was about 98 degrees in the shade and we were in a tarp covered booth in the middle of the stadium on a riser. all morning long during the soundcheck everything was going well and my buddy was bragging about his latest intel beasts and all that- by 6pm that afternoon after fighting lockups and overheats we had to switch out the q6600 on the yamaha cause it kept doing stupid stuff.

i had three computers in my van and grabbed the first one within reach- a Machspeed mobo with an amd black box 5000 and 2 gig of ram, and we ran the software into the geforce6100- and away we went- no more problems there.

darkness came and 20 minutes after the lights came up we lost all the lights and the backdrop video display. smoke was pouring out of one of the intel builds so i grabbed one thats a virtual clone of the one im on now that already had the dmx lighting and software in it and the same video software-the only thing was- this one was brand new- only had four gb of ram and the amd 9550- it had never been run for a show, and replaced BOTH of the two q6600's- we ran the hell out of that rig the rest of the night til about 1 am with absolutely no problems at all- it was bad enough that my buddy lost three computers that day but to have two smaller lower powered amd horses behind it all was the kicker for him.

just 1 of the intels cost him more to build than both of mine combined.

now he owns all amd powered products- as for me- ill trade multitasking horsepower for speed any day of the week, especially if its cost efficiant-because the horsepower brought the show, and the check home that night when it was done- having a computer crash is one thing- having it stop a show with 40,000 fans in the stadium can cost you dearly the next year if you dont get that contract back.

yeah we sellout-every seat- every show- powered by amd & ati everyday.

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sounds like garbage to me still ...

Basically a dual-core > quad-core in hot conditions logic. Nothing new, not to do with if it were Intel or AMD inside. For sure, if those rigs had say the Phenom X4 9750 instead of those Q6600s, the situation could have been similar/worse.

Yes but even then I have had this system running in my room with the temps being 90F and never had a problem . Yes in New Mexico we do get hot in the summer time and well summer time heat is not a unique thing at all . it can get over 100 F here and well as I did not always have water cooling ( just got it this winter ) and do not always use the AC as well it cost a ton of money to run . I have and so has my computer been in the same situation and being boxed in a room at temps 90+ F and it is still going very strong some thing had to be wrong from the start with the 3 computers or they were in the direct sun light or some thing to have this kind of thing happen to them . But maybe it did happen maybe not IJDK . The internet is a fickle place IMHO and things like this can get going and spread like wild fire with out one single shred of proof or evidence . Not saying any one is being dishonest just saying I have put mine in the same kind of rough and unique situations and over clocked to boot and nothing like this ever happened to mine not at all like catching fire or smoking .