First Phenom II Review

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here it is:

http://www.hwbox.gr/showthread.php?t=3189

It in Greek BTW!!

Some more benchmarks:

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread...=371278&page=6

Seems the current Core2 processors are faster clock for clock!! I personally think that whether the Phenom II is successful is all down to the pricing with these processors.

[PeterStoba]

Interesting, the chips aren't much cheaper than i7, £30 or so? The motherboards are though and as they support DDR2 then they could be alot cheaper, but for £100 or a bit more if the extra performance worth it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hopefully the prices that have been toted are only due to the initial higher markup of the first batch of processors that retailers get. If the prices for the 2.8ghz Phenom II X4 920 would drop to around £150 to £160 then it would be decent value for money. At £200 it is too near the 2.66ghz Q9400 and Q9450 for comfort!

[mac124]

The way i understand it (rightly or wrongly) is the big increase for the I7 comes from triple channel memory and this is ALOT more expensive for reasonable speeds and timing. Something half decent, Corsair / OCZ is the best part of £150 for CAS8 at 1600mhz which i assume will be the norm. Want more memory and / or to go faster and its over £200.

Not worth it, yet, imho.

If the Deneb is close on price (which i suspect it will be) then the total cost of the system build should be considerably less than going for I7, especially if it's not too far behind on performance then that will be where my monies will be going come rebuild time some time later in 2009.

[Pob255]

Strange the way at on a few of the gameing bench marks at 1280x1024 the i7 chips are way ahead, but at 1680x1050 the reverse is true and the i7 lags behind every thing.

[Thorsson]

And who games at 1280x1024 (that is likely to be buying cutting edge kit) these days?

[arthurleung]

I'll wait for someone to post overclocking result on retail Phenom II 940.
Not terribly happy with my Q9450/X3350 (Bought it when it first came out) which max at 3.4~3.5Ghz

If Phenom II does hit 4Ghz as rumors then I'll be in for one.
I need a couple of extra heaters in my room.

My room hit below 15'C last night with windows and door closed and my current rig running at full power.

[badass]

I'll wait for someone to post overclocking result on retail Phenom II 940.
Not terribly happy with my Q9450/X3350 (Bought it when it first came out) which max at 3.4~3.5Ghz

If Phenom II does hit 4Ghz as rumors then I'll be in for one.
I need a couple of extra heaters in my room.

My room hit below 15'C last night with windows and door closed and my current rig running at full power.

Robert Dyas are doing 2kw heaters for £10 right now.

Much cheaper than blowing £200 on a new CPU and motherboard to heat your room.

[mac124]

No where near as much fun though.

[magneticman]

If the Deneb is close on price (which i suspect it will be) then the total cost of the system build should be considerably less than going for I7, especially if it's not too far behind on performance then that will be where my monies will be going come rebuild time some time later in 2009.

The OP said the current Core 2s are quicker per clock cycle, and i7 is a far better performer than Core 2 in the same way. If what Cat says is true then surely the Denebs are far behind i7 performance-wise?

[tonpal]

If AMD are offering a couple of processors in the £150 to £200 range I think they may be on to a winner particularly if as Hwbox review indicates they outperform a Q6600 and come close to a Q9450/Q9550.

As for competing with core i7, not a hope. I do, however, believe strongly that if a Phenom II and motherboard is sold at significantly less than a Core i7 and motherboard, the two should never be compared.

[this_is_gav]

A possible saving grace for AMD is that the i7 is currently only beneficial in very specific circumstances. WinRAR and media encoding it's miles ahead of both anything from AMD and Core2. If you don't do an awful lot of that sort of thing, then you'll be losing nothing to the i7 users, while currently at least, saving a lot of £££.

[arthurleung]

Robert Dyas are doing 2kw heaters for £10 right now.

Much cheaper than blowing £200 on a new CPU and motherboard to heat your room.

I personally think it is more well spent when the electricity go thru the desktop and do some actual work before coming out as heat

A possible saving grace for AMD is that the i7 is currently only beneficial in very specific circumstances. WinRAR and media encoding it's miles ahead of both anything from AMD and Core2. If you don't do an awful lot of that sort of thing, then you'll be losing nothing to the i7 users, while currently at least, saving a lot of £££.

For media encoding, apparently the x264 developers didn't have access to Phenom boxes (let alone Phenom II) so they couldn't optimize. I think many applications are faster on i7 just because it is more optimized.

[kalniel]

I'm not sure - I think i7 really is inherently much faster for some types of operations. But games aren't really one of them.

Phenom IIs problem isn't core i7, it's that existing core 2's will probably beat it, and when Intel bring out the core i5 they'll be able to reduce the core 2 pricing to potentially hurt phenom II bang for buck, and have a successor that's probably faster.