Bit-tech best hardware of 2010

[format]

Here's one of the staff's justification

5xxx Series was released 2009 guys, so didn't qualify.
The AMD 6-core CPU was close, but as we found in our original review,
Quote:
Conclusion
Despite being an astonishing £600 cheaper than the exorbitantly-priced Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, the X6 1090T BE still isn’t a very good buy. That’s because despite being clocked at a respectable 3.2GHz and having a useful auto-overclocking feature in Turbo Core, it’s based on a comparatively old architecture – K10, which is in reality only a tweaked version of the ancient K8 architecture dating way back to 2003.

As a result, the X6 1090T BE really struggles to keep up with the similarly priced Intel Core i7-930, which has was noticeably faster in six of our eight benchmarks thanks to its far more modern Nehalem architecture. The only exception to this was our Cinebench and WPrime tests, indicating that the X6 1090T BE may be worth considering for a low cost graphics workstation. However, even then, the i7-930 retook pole position when both CPUs were overclocked to their air-cooled maximum frequency.

Ultimately, despite being a good step forward for AMD, the i7-930 still remains our first choice CPU in the £200-£250 price range. Only if you have a compatible AMD motherboard and just want to upgrade the CPU should you look to buy the Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition.
We're unbiased in all our content - hell, we recommended the HD 5870 1GB for most of the year, and dumped all over the GTX 480, 470 and 465. It's just when new releases come, the red team hasn't really impressed this year.

[watercooled]

They recommended one ATI card. OK I'm convinced!
I know they're mostly an enthusiast magazine but since when is a £160ish CPU considered budget? Are they just avoiding below that because they know Intel doesn't really compete with AMD there?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here's one of the staff's justification

Yet they ignore the Athlon II X3 and ignore the Phenom II X6 1055T and 1075T. They also ignore the far cheaper motherboards for socket AM3 too. They ignore the fact that many AM3 motherboards have USB3.0 and SATA 3.0 and are under £80.

They also ignore core unlocking too.

A Phenom II X6 1055T and an 870 based motherboard with USB3.0 and SATA3.0 can be had for around the same price as Core i7 930 CPU!

Bit-tech also uses programmes which tend to favour Intel CPUs too.

An example is Cinebench 10. Cinebench 11 produces higher scores for AMD CPUs.

They recommended one ATI card. OK I'm convinced!
I know they're mostly an enthusiast magazine but since when is a £160ish CPU considered budget? Are they just avoiding below that because they know Intel doesn't really compete with AMD there?

Where is the HD6850 or HD6870??

[Jay]

I do like the look of the Fractal cases.

[Pob255]

Not including core unlocking when the reason for their choice of budget cpu is based on an extreme overclock

same again for graphics cards, yes the 6xxx series ati isn't as fast as the top end 5xx nvidia and yes the number changing is very annoying but they are very well priced for the performance and have forced nvidia to reduce the 460 price.

[Biscuit]

was good for a giggle at least.

Love the comment about the new AMD chips being K10 a tweaked design dating back to the K8 of 2003... correct me if im wrong but cant you use that logic to take pretty much any modern CPU back to the 90s-early 00s ??

[watercooled]

We are still using an extension of the x86 architecture which dates back to the 8086 CPU, it just doesn't matter. Only performance does...
Just another load of bullcrap they came out with in order to slag off AMD.

Edit: Oh and since we're on the subject - the do fail to mention that Intel are still using bulk CMOS whereas AMD have been using SOI for years. Yeah it doesn't really matter to the end consumer but if they're going to go nitpicking like that, there are two sides to it!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

In their latest recommended hardware article they mentioned the GTX460 1GB and linked to a GTX460SE 1GB:

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2011/01...-january-2010/

[watercooled]

Professionalism at its best.

[scaryjim]

... cant you use that logic to take pretty much any modern CPU back to the 90s-early 00s ??

Well, in a very general sense you can, yes. On the other hand, though, K10.5 really *is* just a very small set of tweaks to K8, in a way that Core 2 *wasn't* when compared to Pentium 4: it completely tore up the old design and came back with something very new. And while I'm sure someone will trot out the fact that Core 2 was based on Pentium 3, the execution core of Core 2 was *very* different to the P3 execution core.

K10 - the original Phenom - kept the actual core architecture of K8 pretty much unchanged, by sticking with a 3 issue, 12 stage pipeline design per core. At least when moving from K7 to K8 the integer pipeline was redesigned: Phenom didn't even manage that. In fact, the only significant changes were putting more cores on one piece of silicon, and adding in a third-level shared cache. So while it's a bit of a chestnut to knock AMD for not evolving their design, it's actually got some factual basis behind it.

[watercooled]

The bit that gets me is that they should let the benchmarks speak - they are so Intel biased they just have to come up with a reason to knock AMD. To most end users, the architecture doesn't matter.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It is getting better:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...hmarked/1#last

They seem to have missed the Toms Hardware review of the Asrock E350M1 which shows that even a CULV and Ion combination is slower in gaming and that 1.3 million Zacate chips have been shipped already.

[Tattysnuc]

Wow! You can really feel the hate for Bit-tech here! I started reading CPC about 4 years ago, and still do subscribe, although now I wonder why. There is rarely an article telling me something new, or a new technique to do something, which is a tremendous shame because 4 years ago, watercooling was completely new to me, and everything I learnt, I picked up initially from there, then through trial and error.

I'm surprised by the lack of an AMD system in their annual roundup because they actually recommend an AMD system consistently throughout the year for folding. The problem is that since BIGADV units went mainstream due to the Core i7 4-core, 8-thread silicon, processors are now more effective £/watt, but I'm not sure £/ppd. Especially since the advent of the SR-2

I do feel for AMD owners and their lack of mention - the X3 processors and the 1090T and 1100T are excellent processors, but they are now, in my perception at least, a generation behind Intel, which I think is what partly forms the basis for the Intel domination. They are excellent chips, but they're just blown away performance wise. I traded in my X2 4200 for an Opteron 156 (or something - it was a while ago) and then went to an E4300. I was amazed at the return that I got for overclocking that baby. Intel made that easier and more accessible for me to do. That has continued with my i7 920 clocked at 4.2Ghz, my 980X @ 4.41Ghz and I've yet to build my 970 rig.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, yes the objections that have been registered are very true, but I can see why they recommend the kit that they do. The list is in need of updating soon though as they are in danger of being left behind by their folding team's set-up being so far in advance of what they are advocating. I left their team for that very reason among others...

I suggest that you look at the last page also. They were pretty damning toward an NVidia card and the i7 970. Looks like they may even have to revise their review of the 970 following several peoples reviews of them when overclocking. It's a shame that the performance from the 6970 and 5970 were not as impressive as NVIdias offerings. Likewise it's a shame that NVidia's offerings are not as power efficient as AMD's....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I do feel for AMD owners and their lack of mention - the X3 processors and the 1090T and 1100T are excellent processors, but they are now, in my perception at least, a generation behind Intel, which I think is what partly forms the basis for the Intel domination.

The X3 processors are under £60 and destroy anything Intel has at that price. Instead they recommend the G6950 and are one of the few well known websites which does so. They do so on the basis of an extreme overclock which you may or may not get. The same goes for their testing suit which again is more biased towards Intel based CPUs and which they have only recently tried to overhaul.

They use X3(which runs better on Intel CPUs) as a CPU gaming test and Crysis which runs better on dual cores too.

They NEVER reviewed the Athlon II X3.

They also ignore things like core unlocking too. If you are going to push a CPU to its limit with overclocking then at least try core unlocking.

One of my mates got a 2.9GHZ Phenom II X4 by unlocking their 2.9GHZ Athlon II X3. Not bad for a processor under £70.

Also,regarding the Phenom II X6 their reviews were not that great too. There were enough tests from other websites to show that the Phenom II X6 was quite close to the socket 1366 and 1156 Core i7 processors in highly multi-threaded software and also at a lower platform cost too. The whole point of getting a six core processor or a quad core with HT is for such software though.

They NEVER reviewed the much cheaper Phenom II X6 1055T and Phenom II X6 1075T either. The Phenom II X6 1055T was priced around the same level as the Core i5 760 for a very long time and the Phenom II X6 1075T is a few quid more.The Phenom II X6 1055T and 1090T were launched at the same time BTW. Instead they made sure they reviewed the most expensive Phenom II X6 processors and hence could compare them to a Core i7 and not a Core i5 instead.

Websites like Hexus and Anandtech did do reviews on the cheaper Phenom II X6 processors.

They did an article on GTX460 overclocking and then forgot about the HD6850 which also overclocks quite well too. Anandtech did an article on HD6850 overclocking BTW.

[watercooled]

AMD CPUs aren't 'blown away' by their Intel counterparts as some websites would have you believe. Even the fastest, ~£800 CPU (980X) Intel has isn't over 5 times faster than an AMD 1055T as the price would indicate. In fact it rarely pulls ahead of twice as fast and in most games there's nothing in it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It will be interesting to see what they say when they review the socket 1155 Pentium and Core i3 processors.