AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 8, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SYSMark 2007
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.
AMD hasn’t done too well under SYSMark 2007, especially with Phenom - it was just never competitive. There were even murmurs of AMD complaining about its poor performance under SYSMark 2007 not too long ago. The complaints never went anywhere because Phenom II addressed the shortcomings. SYSMark 2007 favors larger caches and the original Phenom left its cores cache-starved. With 1.5MB of L3 cache per core, Phenom II now offers the same performance as its closest cost competitors under SYSMark 2007.
The Phenom II X4 940 gets the exact same score as the Core 2 Quad Q9400. The Phenom II X4 920 equals the performance of the Q9300, which is actually a bit more expensive than AMD’s proposed price. If the two were competing against the Q9550 and Q9400, respectively, AMD would go back to trailing Penryn.
The older Phenom processors are mostly worthless here - Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 outperforms the Phenom X4 9950 by 8%, and that’s with CnQ disabled. Turn on CnQ and the performance gap grows to a noticeable 25%. One of the biggest advantages of Phenom II is that you can have CnQ enabled without the painful performance impact.
It’s worth pointing out the sort of performance you can get out of a high frequency dual-core CPU here. The Core 2 Duo E8600 is a bit expensive for a dual-core, priced at $266, but it offers the same performance as the Core 2 Quad Q9650. The more affordable Core 2 Duo E8400 runs at 3.0GHz, priced at $166, and outperforms all sub-2.66GHz quad-core Core 2 chips. While a quad-core will last you longer, if you are a frequent upgrader it’s worth paying attention to the dual-core market. An E8400 today, followed by a mainstream Nehalem next year, could be your path to performance enlightenment.
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rudolphna - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Hey anand, do you think you could grill AMD and see if you can get out of them which chips will be made at the upcoming Malta, NY fab facility? Will it be PII or maybe bulldozer?mkruer - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Anand, I do alot of paring and although the recovery rate is good, i would like to see the results for creating a par2 file.Natfly - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I'm glad AMD is somewhat competitive in the quad core realm but I just cannot get over how blindingly fast the Core i7s are. It is incredible.I hope AMD can make it through, for consumer's (and my stock's) sake. This is a step in the right direction.
xusaphiss - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Come on, guys! I like a competitive market as much as the next guy but AMD is a whole generation behind. They should have had these when the 45nm C2s came out!AMD is lapped!
It's time for them to die!
CPU standards will only go down if they actually resort to third-party distribution!
Their video cards are always run hotter than NVIDIA and just less stable and overclockable. The only way they was able to stay alive in the race was pitting two of their GPUs against one on one board. NVIDIA hasn't even begun using DDR5 yet!
Intel and NVIDIA is not really receiving competition from AMD. AMD is just lowering standards.
ThePooBurner - Saturday, January 10, 2009 - link
PLAYSTATION THREE is that you?aeternitas - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
We would not of had C2D for years, if not for AMD. Please sit down your logic is flawed.Kroneborge - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Oh, let's hope AMD doesn't die. Or you can add a couple hundred on to the price of all your favorite Intel processors lol.Genx87 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
This one is simply not going to cut the butter by the middle of 09. True they are cutting into the Core 2 Duo's performance advantage. It still for the most part falls short. And I didnt see this thing really challange the i7 which will be Intels flagship chip by the end of 09. I dont know about AMD's future chips. But the Phenom needs an arch replacement for AMD to compete with Intel.JakeAMD - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I would suggest an amazing PC experience is about far more than benchmarks or the performance of one component. Some benchmarks today are at risk of losing relevance to real application performance. For example, performance on 3DMark Vantage scores don’t necessarily translate into a better gaming performance. Also, the CPU-only approach to video processing performance is now thoroughly outmoded, as that should be offloaded to the GPU. The Dragon platform technology is really within the budgets people are affording themselves today and we’re doing a better job of serving the real needs of the PC market today. So I would ask you – Is $1000 or more worth the performance difference?Genx87 - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
I am looking at these gaming benchmarks which is the most intensive thing I do on my computer. My 180 dollar E8400 is cheaper and faster.On the server side the i7 looks more attractive for my virtualization and sql server upgrade project. Where $1000 is pennies on the dollar. Though when you factor in total system cost it is usually not even that much.
Anyways the i7 will come down in price over the course of 09 as a consumer friendly platform is released and the cost of DDR3 falls as production ramps. So it wont cost 1000 more for an i7 system for long. And I question whether an i7 system costs that much more now.