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
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Now this is a tremendous victory for AMD. The Phenom II X4 940 doesn't break any performance records, nor can it outshine the Core i7 920, but what it does do is offer the same DivX encoding performance as Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9400. The cache and clock speed advantages are just too much for Intel's parts.
x264 HD Encode
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
The first pass of the x264 test is a very unique win for AMD; clock for clock it's faster than Penryn here. The trick is that the first pass of the x264 test is mostly an analysis pass, which really benefits from Phenom's integrated memory controller. It's an advantage that no amount of cache can overcome.
The second pass of the x264 encode is where the majority of the work gets done, hence the lower frame rates. The actual encode is happening here and the Phenom II X4 940 ties the performance of the Core 2 Quad Q9400. The same goes for the Phemom II X4 920 and the Q9300. The Q9550 and the Q9400 are faster than the 940 and 920 respectively, but Intel needs to reduce the pricing on both of those parts to remain competitive.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
Windows Media Encoder has always been an AMD favorite and Phenom II does extremely well here. Again, clock for clock we're at the same performance levels of Penryn, thanks to Phenom's IMC. The Phenom II X4 940 and 920 both outperform their price competitors; in fact, they both perform outside of their price class.
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TravisChen - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...What's the system configuration of the Power Consumption test and which software did you run for loading the system?
Clauzii - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
2009 is going to be very interesting for AMD. The foundry layoff should give them some air to breathe and concentrate on the CPU designs.Skobbolop - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
AM2 support sounds good, but as far i can see very few mobos with AM2 chipset acually supports phenom CPU's... too bad..i was hoping that i could upgrade with my MSI K9N Platinum.. :(.. this sucks..
Thorsson - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Performance isn't really any better, except in a couple of tests, than C2D chips that are 18 months old, so there's no reason to upgrade for a large chunk of us, and most of the rest will want i7.They need a top end chip that compares to the top end i7 like the 4870 was to the GT280. And this is some way from that. It's like the 4870 was competitive to the 9800GT, and was the same price as well.
With no upgrade path this looks like one strictly for the fanboys at the moment.
calyth - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
Ha. I'm not quite sure whether I hsould try to respond to this, but sure...It's a non-trivial task to completely redesign the cores themselves, and I'm not even sure whether they could, say cut out the core, and drop in a new one. It's easy for us sideliners to say they need to improve, and quick, but they need to design a new one that has a much better IPC, with speed, not haste.
How is this with no upgrade path? This provides an upgrade path for boards up to AM2, which is good enough. With the AM3 versions coming out, people could drop the AM3 version into an AM2/AM2+ board, wait if necessary until DDR3 prices falls some more, and swap to a newer board with DDR3. And now they've a spare computer.
Look at the i7 prices. Friend of mine just spent 2k for an i7. Sure, he's having fun compiling and playing games with impunity, but I don't think it's the best use of money. Also, C2D is dead. You can't put an i7 into and C2D board, and there's still a good amount of people with older boards that could have a drop in boost.
Atechie - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
If the CPU had been relased just after Core2, then it might have been a good CPU.But today, after 2 years, AMD's "native" quadcore still can beat the Core2 clock for clock...that is more than sad.
All Intel needs to do now is slash prices of Yorkfield until their i5 socket 1156 dualchannel DDR3 comes out, and they still got AMD by the balls.
To little, to hyped, to late...
Sunrise089 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
This is silly. If the CPU had come out in Summer '06, it would have been god-like. Quad core vs dual-core, higher clock speed, equal or better overclocking, very competitive clock-for-clock, and on a smaller and cooler process.What you could say was that if it came out right as Peryn launched it would be a close race...but Peryn improved lots of stuff over Conroe, so it isn't fair to say AMD is 2 years behind.
Denithor - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I think that's what Atechie's getting at. Intel took the right path by just cobbling together two dual-core processors to make a quad, while AMD spend excessive time and God only knows how much cash to develop a "monolithic" quad. Which then rolled over and played dead.Hopefully AMD has learned from its mistakes. Otherwise Intel may not have much competition in the near future. What's AMD trading at again, these days?
Proteusza - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I dont know, this doesnt do it for me. I'm a massive AMD fan - I run a 5600+ right now, my previous CPU was an XP 2400+.What is it now, 2 years since the Core 2 Duo was released? And AMD still cant match in clock for clock performance? After the monumental flop that was Phenom, massive delays, poor performance, high power consumption, the TLB bug, patchy backwards compatibility (my MSI K9N mobo with the Nforce 570 SLI chipset cant run AM2+ chips, but the equivalent Asus can), they launch the Phenom II, and the best I can say about it is that is that its acceptable. Acceptable. Not Phenomenal. Just acceptable. Price vs Performance wise, it gets the job done, mostly, sort of. Throw newer game engines at it and even the Q9600, that old workhouse, can beat it.
Its not that Phenom II is a terrible processor. Its not. Its just not what I expected AMD to launch, many months after the flop that was Phenom. I expected something that could at least beat a 65nm Core 2 Duo, if not a Nehalem.
As Anand hinted at, Intel is going to drop prices, which they can afford to, forcing AMD to do likewise, which they cant. AMD's die size is similar yet their margins are far smaller. Intel's next CPU will be the die shrink of Nehalem, what will AMD release? Will it even match Penryn? I can only hope.
KikassAssassin - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Since the Phenom II was always known to just be a die shrink with some optimizations, you were setting your hopes way too high if you thought it was going to compete directly with the i7. AMD needed this launch to keep them in the game, and it looks like it's probably just good enough to be able to do that. We probably won't be seeing any big breakthroughs from AMD until Bulldozer, so we just have to hope that this architecture will have enough headroom in it to last that long.