AMD Phenom II 940 "Xtremely" Benchmarked

Page 19 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Oh, Im not jumping for joy either, as these benches arent complete. Nor am I jumping for joy, or of the belief that P2 will catch Yorkfield, clock for clock. At 320$ for a Q9550, AMD has lots of room here. Intel lops 100$ off, and AMD has a competing chip selling for more than their previous gen, performs x amount better, and will get sales. That makes me happy for AMD.
Cheaper is cheaper. This needs to settle out first. Coming in under the 9550 is what AMD is going to do, period. Does the 4870 kill nVidias best selling mid highend card, the 260? No, theyre both close to each other, but the pricing has been steadily better on the 4870, with room to move. Im of the impression using their immersion process, and using 45nm instead of 65nm, will bring higher yields % wise, and of course, more cores per wafer, all at a slightly higher price. That should make people happy for AMD. And thats including unforseen price drops as well. The big monies been spent, going to immersion, and R&D costs for Bulldozer look more easier handled in this direction theyre going. Big picture? Lots of little things going right, hopefully will add up for the big picture
 
This price-performance and gaming-only talk is making me dizzy.

If you have an AM2 board, then a P2 upgrade would certainly be cheaper than even a Q6600. The Q6600 is slower, but for gaming-only, it holds up in the same way the P2 does. But if you are purely a gamer, what are you doing with an AM2 board in the first place? If you rode the A64 wave before the Conroe, wouldn't you have a 939 board instead?

So P2 looks like it fits between Kentsfield and Yorkfield, and some people may be a little disappointed and anxious to see the AM3 version because it can use the faster DDR3 memory. Wait, what does this do to price/performance? We just explained that we're not comparing P2 to i7 because even though the i7 920 is cheap, the board is expensive, and the memory is expensive. But if we're getting DDR3 for comparison, doesn't that leave only the X58 board as the reason for not getting an i7? To me, that places i7 back in the running for price/performance, especially as somewhat cheaper X58's are coming out. Bottom line, AM3 is going to face competition from i7, and I fear it's going to be pretty stiff from the performance angle. AMD should be extending its production of AM2 P2's unless it knows internally that AM3 is a considerable performance jump.

Back to the benchmarks, I have a complaint that some of the benches do not appear to be CPU benches. There are flash tables showing the Q6600 to be superior to the higher clocked, higher cache Q9550; there are tables showing negative or inconsistent scaling with clock over the same architecture. And then there are the GPU limited benchmarks. Yet all these results were included in the XS spreadsheet. While I'd still agree that P2 places between Kentsfield and Yorkfield, clock for clock, the spreadsheet may have overstated the amount P2 was behind Yorkfield.
 
Wasnt it you who pointed out most gamers use old single or dual core setups? Theyll have to buy something eventually, so since the vast majority are still using neither C2D nor P1, theres sales out there.

As for the spreadsheet, yea, its somewhat overstated, and also sythetically dominated, but has changed alot from the first one, where there were less games, and no CAD marks at all.

As for DDR3, its not the ram thats costly, its using it in trips instead of pairs, its tri channel instead of dual, more layers, etc etc, things you wont find on AMD boards, as theyre somewhat uneeded for DT
 



using a i7 at 4.2 ghz and 6gb of ddr3 at 1600 8-8-8

1 - you notice you can google and down load programs, while your googling and down loaing programs more programs all simutanously and they load all at the same time

2) you see things seem to open instantly no matter what you do there are no delays

3) my son tests systems for us - he does not play crysis (not more then a week total in life) he won every on line game #1 every time

33 to 20 in second
35 to 18

and this is not a game he plays! i shipped this last system with free crysis 2 so we used it as test

finally

your are future proof for 5 years - that is my guess for games and os

yes 5 years - windows 7 is faster the vista

you can rip through every app with raid and a good card!


i sold my core 2 qx9650 - i planeed on keeping: after all why upgrade? i knew my system could run up to 4.6ghz and ran cool at 4.2ghz see below:

WSZwc-good1-4.jpg



for $300 for the i7 for $225 to $250 for mobo and $150 for ram! sell your parts boys (and ladies) and go i7 know!

I REALLY WANT TO EMPHASIZE I WATED TO KEEP MY QX9650 BUT THE NEW I7 SYSTEMS BELOW BLEW IT AWAY TOTALLY BOTH RAN 64 BIT
WSZi7X438-4.jpg


SOMETIMES I DO PHOTOS FOR FUN but this time this is show that i ran my water cooled demo for customers to test to the i7 i was shipping and i tore my qx9650 apart!

Intel fanboy#1 is i7 for life (peeps i am only here to help ya i get a kick out helping people fix their systems their selfs and building the right systems their selfs and make sure you get the right system!)

go cheap on the gpu if need be upgrade latter and go x58 i7 and 6gb of dd3 powred by 64bit os

sorry about this i am so tired from shipping systems for x-mas now i have the after x-mas rush- CES next week!

 



sorry to be harsh, rude and obnoxious at times - i just do not want people to be mislead - i7 rules. for $900 your have the whole set up and runs over 4ghz and blows it all out away!

your response was honorable and truthful


I help a lot of people that come here that do not know much about computers, all you guys in this theads know alot, a want make sure those who are very impressimble do not get the wrong idea - like core 2 is almost as good as i7

the sites and magines have called i7 an "evolution not revolutions" they said "i7 is faster but is it worth it?" - this is very misleading if your building a new system - i7 is the only way to go! ALWAYS USE RAID0 AND DUAL RAID FOR BACK UP

ok so for the first time builder reading these thread - make sure you build around the i7 system not a round a gpu!

REVOLUTIONALY CHANGES IN 08

1) WATER COOLING IS ONLY BENFITIAL TO GPU'S it is waste to water cool cpu's in many cases - NOW THAT IS WRONG! the i7 loves water!

2) wate cooling is really just for people that want to spend lots of money - wrong! the i7 systems will run faster at higher speeds.

qx9650 at sane voltage = 4.2ghz on air 4.4ghz on water

i7 920 = 3.8ghz on air maybe 4ghz on water? runs a lot ccooer

3) gpus push 80-85c stock and befit alot from water cooling - know with the i7 we can use 3 gpu's and triple sli on 2500 res monitor

what about a triple to go? 3800 resolution water cooling that baby!

ok i am half a sleep and i can see i am just rambling....

monster dude! your repsonce was awesume and get an i7 you see what i mean or come try one of ours!
 
^He always advertises his PCs he builds in some way.

But his last post is probably right. Get a Core i7 i920, OC to at least 3.5GHz and a TriSLI/quad CF and you could probably play most games on max at HD res or higher. Core i7 seems to scale very well with more GPUs. It seems that its the first system that actually would push a multicard setup to its limits, and maybe PII will as well.

BTW, calling it PII gets a bit confusing at first. I was thinking Pentium II at first since PII was its abbreviation. But maybe PII will be better....
 
Lots of mixed messages..out of nowhere he says RAID RAID RAID...then i7 i7 i7. i7 sounds great but the CPU and GPU load power draw on the $1250 SBM is just crazy. Almost 600W power draw under load. Almost $0.048 an hour * 6 hours/day = $8.64/month USD @ $0.08/KWH, which isn't too bad but its about 3 times what my e6750 @3.7ghz and ATI 4850 system draws. If you game for 6 hours a day you will notice the bill go up and if you get this cpu right now, chances are you are an enthusiast. i7 looks great but it's hard to jump on that ship with PII coming very soon.
 


Uh, thanks, I also do see your points, since i7 is a very nice step if you're building from scratch, but... WTF, you should try politics or marketing, pal.

I was kind of on a pseudo-rant yesterday and now I'm all sweet after your second post. lol

BTW, awesome pics! Problem is it would cost me a lot to import it. PM me if you ship outside of the USA. : )
 


Except that the Phenom II can't "use" DDR2-1250. The Phenom can only be clocked at DDR2-1066 at the fastest. The additional headroom might allow for some overclocking of the HT if a review was actually overclocking it.
 
Wasnt it you who pointed out most gamers use old single or dual core setups? Theyll have to buy something eventually, so since the vast majority are still using neither C2D nor P1, theres sales out there.
Click to expand...
Yes, most gamers are, by definition, mainstream. And they don't upgrade their CPU/board yearly. For this group, the lack of upgradeability of AM2 is a small issue, so not affording i7 matters little. But for this group, the Q6600 would fit the bill more than the P2. They need to upgrade eventually, but both the Q6600 and P2 go into throwaway boards, so I don't see the price/performance/value argument for the more expensive P2.

No one referring to i7 is saying it's right for mainstream gamers; I'm just asking, what kind of marketing strategy are you using for the P2? Marketing to those who mistakenly bought AM2's and have been suffering in game performance for the last two years? Or to those who will buy AM3 but for some reason cannot afford i7 mobos? If you're marketing to non-gamers, I'd understand it. It's only when you mention gamers that I have to ask, where's the logic?

As for the spreadsheet, yea, its somewhat overstated, and also sythetically dominated
Click to expand...
I'm not so much concerned about synthetic domination, as the Greek site actually went pretty mild with synthetics. I'm aware of a bunch of synthetics where the i7 is several-fold faster than ES P2's - things like cache-to-cache latency, RAM bandwidth and latency, lower cache bandwidth - but at the same time, Phenoms outperform FSB-era Core 2's. They included none of these outliers. Just concerned about how they included games and SolidWorks. Of course a P2 and a Q6600 both score 28fps at very high detail, but why mark 0% improvement for the CPU when it's the fault of the GPU?

As for DDR3, its not the ram thats costly, its using it in trips instead of pairs, its tri channel instead of dual, more layers, etc etc, things you wont find on AMD boards, as theyre somewhat uneeded for DT
Click to expand...
Isn't that what I just said? That the only difference between AM3 and 1366 is the price of the boards.

The i7 doesn't *need* triple channel; it can boot up fine with dual or even single channel, if you so insist that triple channel is unneeded for DT. The ability to use 3 channels is a feature, not a weakness, except when it comes to pricing the boards.

And DDR3 is still more expensive per GB than DDR2. Isn't that one of the arguments for AM2 over 1366? No need to abandon that.
 
No, Im not saying DDR3 is cheaper, what Im saying is, for the vast vast majority, DDR3 using tri channel simply isnt needed. Using these "options" come as quite a high expense, especially for the common Joe. Also, the 920, or better yet, the 925 will be priced much closer to current Q6600 pricing, and still outperform it, so yea, 920-925 is a no brainer here. Then of course there Propus , Q8xxx etc. The fact remains, using DDR3 in Intels solution is much more costly than AMDs solution, all features aside, and people think with their wallets. Overall, the performance seen on i7 for the average user isnt there going i7, whereas, its not signicant enough perf over the Qs nor P2 to justify that extra cost IMHO

So, in essence, having a P2 vs a truly price competitive product is a compelling ahswer, as new adopters arrive in either first builds, or simple upgrading. OEM sales should reflect this, as well as word of mouth off those sales. In other words, at decent price points, AMD has widened its field accross the board, save for the very high end, where features come at a high premium
 
The fact remains, using DDR3 in Intels solution is much more costly than AMDs solution
Click to expand...
This is the statement I'm disagreeing with. 4 GBs of DDR3 on an X58 board do not cost more than 4 GBs of DDR3 on an AM3 board. It's the board itself, and itself only, that costs more. If the upgrade to 6 GB DDR3 moves performance, whether due to having 50% more RAM or getting more bandwidth out of triple-channel, then that is a separate price-performance consideration, but you preemptively suggested that wouldn't be the case.

Example:
$300 Phenom II 945
$100 2 x 2GB DDR3
$100-150? AM3 mobo
TOTAL: $500-550

$300 i7 920
$100 2 x 2 GB DDR3
$210 X58 mobo
TOTAL: $610

And I don't really know how to price the mobos. The only AM3 I see around is a $100 board from a questionable manufacturer that doesn't even support DDR3 (good luck arguing it'll be faster than AM2 while still using DDR2). On the other hand, the cheapest X58 mobo is now $210, and it seems to have more OC potential, a substantially larger feature set, and a half decent manufacturer to back it.

So even being somewhat lenient with the AM3 pricing, and ignoring the upcoming i5, the present i7 is 11-22% more expensive. That percentage only goes down as you add fixed costs like GPU, drives, peripherals, but the bottom line looks to be spending $60-110 more for an i7 instead of an AM3 P2. Not very compelling if the P2 hardly keeps up in the future, is it? This would be arguable if using dual channel hampered the i7 noticeably, and the conversion to DDR3 helped the P2 substantially, but you and most others seem to agree that dual channel benches about the same for DT, and judging both from the 939 - AM2 transition and P2's performance positioning and technical characteristics (8MB of cache), I find it really hard to forecast a substantial boost from DDR2 -> 3.

It looks to be a hard sell for AM3 P2, so I suggested that AMD leverage the AM2 and DDR2 glut for as long as possible, instead of EOL'ing AM2 P2's six months from now.

P.S. Upon reflection, if AM3 can use DDR2 as the Jetway board is suggesting, then the fact that AMD will EOL AM2's shouldn't matter, as what counts is when the mobo makers EOL their DDR2 boards, and I trust they'll do that only after DDR3 beats DDR2 at price/performance. But that makes AM2/DDR2 performance that much more urgent, as when DDR3 becomes this cheap, the i7 build will be even more compelling.
 
@ jaydee: I've finished reading the article and it is really a very interesting and useful one - which gives me some hope for AM3, if they increase the NB/IMC frequencies. Now I would want a similar article about Nehalem and Penryn to compare the scaling. Many people said that, post 3 GHz, Core 2 doesn't't show much of an improvement. I would like to see some evidence of that because, if Phenom II really overclocks as it's being said and the scaling is very close to a 1:1 ratio, then we would be in for quite a threat.
 
Well, about the AM3 platform cost, I agree with what Wr said. It must be really compelling to be considered more worth of my money than i7 (and just an average of $50 less for the mainboard simply won't cut it).
 
to wr ^^ read above/
No longer is it a K8, and higher or faster memory wont matter, so yes, we will se pe4f increases with DDR3
OK, so the i7 920 will be as cheap as the P2 920? No. The mobos? No. The perf difference in games? Maybe a lil, but not enough? Possibly. Using dual channel on i7? Whats the point? Add in 1 more stick of ram. Start adding all this up for minimal perf gain in gaming. i7 isnt the solution here, nor the real competitor, because the way Intels set it up, it cant in this particular market, because of price/perf. The Q series is however a different matter, and dollar for dollar, once again, AMD is capable to either compete or win here. As I said, theyve widened thier overall market coverage, and can not only compete in pricing, but perf as well, as you cant have one without the other. Someone said theyll have to lower their prices. By how much? If they truly compete, and a lil less is still a little less, or cheaper is cheaper, then AMD has done this.

We all need to be truthful now. Intels main advantage over the old P1 was clocks and ocing. Thats gone, and Intesl new solution, the whole solution, not just the ram, but having to have 3 instead of 2 etc, isnt cost competitive currently in this market, so, its up to the older Yorkies to hold the turf, and AMD is willing and able to take them on. When I mentioned solution, I was including 3 sticks vs 2, mobo ,and toal cost of cpu itself, where both the Qs and the P2's (including the 920) are compelling enough in price/perf to keep people from buying this new solution from Intel
 



If thats correct, and i7s performance is more sensative to memory freq due to the IMC, then PII should be much closer in performance on a level playing feild i.e. equal setups
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom