Phenom II 940 - Core 2 Quad Q9550

[tomstar]

Could you give a link to that review?

If I got it right, AM3 mainboards are just AM2+ boards socketwise that support DDR3 which makes it practicly useless to go with AM3 if you don't want to pay for DDR3 since every new processor that will be introduced will fit into an AM2+ board as well as into an AM3 board.

 

[cjl]

If your into games then go for the AMD because the Phenom II is smoother in games than any of the intels and that's more important than a few fps in some benchmark. If you do 3D animation for a living then go for the i7 because it's quicker at rendering.

Feels smoother? That's absolute garbage - you can measure minimum frame rates, and the Intels are just as good if not better than AMD in this category (especially i7).

 

[Ken168]

@tomstar

PII 940 is running at 3ghz.

Btw, you don't need to be a scientist to overclock. If you can get into bios... all you need to do is just to increase the multiplier, in my case i selected multiplier to 17.5 --> save ---> boom!! 3.5ghz on stock cooler & stock voltage...and it isn't even warm to make me want a better cooler.

 

[uguv]

Could you give a link to that review?

Here's Anandtech's initial Phenom review http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492

Here's the crossfire one (which also includes single card performance) comparing the i7 920, PII 940, and Q9550: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3506

If I got it right, AM3 mainboards are just AM2+ boards socketwise that support DDR3 which makes it practicly useless to go with AM3 if you don't want to pay for DDR3 since every new processor that will be introduced will fit into an AM2+ board as well as into an AM3 board.

The AM3 boards coming out will have a new chipset so they will probably have other features and enhancements but the DDR3 support is one of the major changes. Just make that if you get an AM2+ board that the manufacturer will support AM3 processors on that board (since they may need a BIOS update.)

 

[tomstar]

Yeah I know the PII 940 is running at 3.0GHz. But I ment to ask if there were any new AM3 processors running higher then 3.0GHz or at 3.0GHz. But I forgot that the PII 940 is actually an AM3 proc. that is capable of running in an AM2+ board.

PII 940 in AM3 socket = DDRIII support?

 

[jerseygamer]

We have no idea atm what will come with AM3. Improvements and stock clocks at higher speeds is all we can hope for. You never know untill it hits the shelf and the real world gets a hand on one.

 

[tomstar]

The Anandtech review dissapoints me a bit. The Q9550 is clearly the better processor. Even though it's 50 euro's more then the 940 I do get more power then the 940.

Should never have read that review lol, back at 0...

What's wrong with all these reviews, sometimes the 940 is equal to the 9550 and in another review the 9550 is clearly higher up.

Maybe it's because of the amount of other processors bewteen the 940 and 9550 that makes the difference looksbig. Not sure, I'm going to review hunt some more.

 

[uguv]

The PII 940 will not work in an AM3 socket. The PII 920 and PII 940 were designed to work only in AM2+ boards (and they also happen to work in certain AM2 boards).

The 2nd review I linked does show that the PII 940 and Q9550 are pretty close in gaming, both with and without crossfire if that's your major interest.

 

[tomstar]

Yeah, but the first review does show the that the 9550 is quite up ahead or am I mistaking?

I just recalculated and the i7 system without a graphics card will be 757 euro's where the Phenom II system will cost 588 euro's.

I did pick an expensive motherboard but only 2GB's of ram though. I could cave up on the mother board and go the gigabyte one with "only" 3 PCI-e 16 slots which would make the i7 system 30 euro's cheaper, but that's still 727 euro's for an i7 system.


940 system 574 euro's
i7 - too expensive (750)
Q9550 - 613 euro's.

Q9550 worth the extra 40 euro's? And is it even a good choice as the 755 is as good as dead.

I feel like I'm asking myself the same stupid question over and over again...
I should just go phenom II dammit.

Then I gues there is one dilemma that remains: AM3 or AM2+, AM3 means: Wait for a newer processor and I have no id when they will come with 3GHz quadcores for AM3.

 

[Malcolmk]

Feels smoother? That's absolute garbage - you can measure minimum frame rates, and the Intels are just as good if not better than AMD in this category (especially i7).

I'm not talking about framerate, I'm talking about the transition between frames and how easy it is on your eyes. If your running a high res screen you will notice the AMD Phenom is a more pleasant gaming experience. Same thing can be said between Nvidia and ATI. The most important thing is what it's like in actual gameplay and not how it scores in some benchmark.

 

[cjl]

That is still garbage - the "transition between frames" is entirely dependent on the monitor, as well as the ease on the eyes. Video card has something to do with it as well. Almost none of it is the CPU.

 

[Malcolmk]

Try it for yourself. That's why I don't use my Intel system for games anymore. As for the cpu having nothing to do with playability do I need to remind you the AMD is a monolithic design with an intergrated memory controller and the 775 quads are two dual cores glued together with an external memory controller that cost Intel $5 to make.

Intel has come a long way with the i7 design but it is still expensive and runs hot. The Phenom 940 is great value, runs cool, has an unlocked multiplyer and uses DDR2 ram which means you can run 8gig of ram without breaking the budget.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3506&p=10

 

[fazers_on_stun]

The Anandtech review dissapoints me a bit. The Q9550 is clearly the better processor. Even though it's 50 euro's more then the 940 I do get more power then the 940.

Should never have read that review lol, back at 0...

What's wrong with all these reviews, sometimes the 940 is equal to the 9550 and in another review the 9550 is clearly higher up.

Maybe it's because of the amount of other processors bewteen the 940 and 9550 that makes the difference looksbig. Not sure, I'm going to review hunt some more.

You should compare the actual review results and not pay too much attention to their conclusions, IMHO - Toms, Anands, etc. are being pretty careful nowadays to cast AMD in a good light due to all the fanbois flaming (mainly from AMDzone trolls). Take a look at THIS review, or THIS review for instance.

As for waiting on AM3, wait a few more months for the D0 stepping of i7 to appear: Intel's upcoming Core i7 975 EE benchmarked

Although this is hardly a huge step up from the current 965XE part which is clocked at 3.2GHz, the new 975XE seems to overclock much better. Using a Gigabyte EX58-Extreme motherboard, Fugger managed to push the 975XE D0 engineering sample at 5259MHz without any problems and with the help of a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards, him and his partner Mikeguava managed to break 47,000 in 3DMark 05 which is a new world record.

I'm sure the D0 stepping will apply to all the i7's and not just the extreme editions...

 

[spathotan]

Im suprised only one person in this thread has commented on the resident idiot/troll comparing the i7 965 extreme and the P2 940 in prices for a reason to buy the Phenom.

Anyways, go with the cheaper build.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

775 quads are two dual cores glued together

OP: This "double cheeseburger" argument, plus the undocumented and unverifiable "smoothiness" statements - "It just feels smoother!" - from AMD fans seem to crop up fairly frequently . The closest thing I've seen in any review lately is the one Anandtech did recently, which you've already seen, dealing with minimum frames per second. As cjl pointed out, that is the correct parameter. Too few FPS and the game gets choppy.

It's your money, so probably the best thing for you to do is try and see a P2, i7 920 and Q9550 system up close, if you know anybody with those systems. Certainly I wouldn't pay attention to posters who post such nonsense as the quote above...

 

[spathotan]

Another good point ^^^

The two duals argument is the biggest pile of BS you can find. The people that bring this up as a negative are the same people who thought the original Phenoms "native quad" was oh so great.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Im suprised only one person in this thread has commented on the resident idiot/troll comparing the i7 965 extreme and the P2 940 in prices for a reason to buy the Phenom.

Anyways, go with the cheaper build.

That's because the rest of us have lives and get tired of responding to every one of enigma's ignorant posts

 

[spathotan]

If you do decide to go with a Phenom II, Gigabyte has released their new 790X board with the SB750 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128381 Good price as well.

 

[cjl]

Try it for yourself. That's why I don't use my Intel system for games anymore. As for the cpu having nothing to do with playability do I need to remind you the AMD is a monolithic design with an intergrated memory controller and the 775 quads are two dual cores glued together with an external memory controller that cost Intel $5 to make.

Intel has come a long way with the i7 design but it is still expensive and runs hot. The Phenom 940 is great value, runs cool, has an unlocked multiplyer and uses DDR2 ram which means you can run 8gig of ram without breaking the budget.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3506&p=10

I've seen and (for a short period) used an older gen phenom system. I was less than impressed. The Q6600 system that I also tried at the same time was noticeably smoother, and image quality was the same.

Now, both were a lot slower than my current i7, which is to be expected. As for breaking the budget? DDR3 has fallen like a rock in pricing, and you can now get 6GB of DDR3 1333 for less than $150.

If you want to keep claiming this "smoothness" thing, provide proof. Take video. Measure minimum framerates. I don't care how you do it, but provide some kind of actual backing to your claims if you want anyone to even remotely take you seriously.

 

[Malcolmk]

Well the AMD is playable at a higher resolution than my intel setup and it's easier on my eyes. I've tried four different 775 motherboards and the AMD is still better in gameplay. I use to be an Intel fanboy but after trying the Phenom quad I wish I had tried them a lot earlier. In Australia DDR3 ram is still three or four times the price of ddr2 so I'll be sticking with DDR2 for a lot longer yet. Anyway I am not wasting anymore of my time on debating the same thing over and over again. Just get whatever setup is within your budget.

 

[smithereen]

Why would you buy a 940 if you're not overclocking? The 920 is nearly as fast, and $40 cheeper

 

[shugs]

I just recently put together a new build 1 1/2 weeks ago, consisting of PII 940 - Asus M3A79 T-Deluxe and I was also doubting towards the end about the maybe still getting the Q9550 instead.

The reason for this were the reviews I read, in the end they all seemed very biased towards the Phenom II 940 and conclusions always degraded the CPU. I eventually decided to stick with the 940 built especially since the obvious price difference and back then I read that intel is moving away from socket 775 (too lazy to search for a link), thus I'm not even taking the risk that I won't be able to upgrade the CPU in a year or two.

If you are going to get a phenom II 940 on a AM2+ (I would advise 790FX and SB750, you don't need an onboard graphics card w/the 790GX) board then you should have an older ahtlon cpu available to update the bios. I ran into this problem and was luckily able to borrow a friends cpu in order to update the BIOS of my Asus board (which you can easily upgrade through a USB stick formatted w/FAT).

My experience with the phenom is very good, I didn't run any benchmarks but I haven't run into any problems yet either.

Regarding crossfire, if your are going to use 2x, 3x or 4x you can only benefit from 4x if your using single slot GPU's, for example on my asus (4x xfire) can only use 3x since there is not enough space to place 4 HD4870's. So you could only use if i'm not mistaken 4x HD4850. But you should check the layout from the board to make sure you can actually make use of mentioned crossfire. Since manufacturers tend to overrate their products.

- Shugs

PS: I paid €222 for the 940 ~2 weeks ago online.

 

[medjohnson77]

If he goes to water cooling, which I know it will be a high price, but just saying that for a grand total of 4x4870's around $800 bucks, and another $480 dollars to Danger den for the 4870 water blocks, and about another $250 bucks for a custom water system he could go 4x4870's. Water blocks make them single slot cards.

I am just waiting for Enigma to jump back in and say "I told you so guys, with that extra $1000 dollars look what he can get!" LOL

 

[Malcolmk]

I just recently put together a new build 1 1/2 weeks ago, consisting of PII 940 - Asus M3A79 T-Deluxe and I was also doubting towards the end about the maybe still getting the Q9550 instead.

The reason for this were the reviews I read, in the end they all seemed very biased towards the Phenom II 940 and conclusions always degraded the CPU. I eventually decided to stick with the 940 built especially since the obvious price difference and back then I read that intel is moving away from socket 775 (too lazy to search for a link), thus I'm not even taking the risk that I won't be able to upgrade the CPU in a year or two.

If you are going to get a phenom II 940 on a AM2+ (I would advise 790FX and SB750, you don't need an onboard graphics card w/the 790GX) board then you should have an older ahtlon cpu available to update the bios. I ran into this problem and was luckily able to borrow a friends cpu in order to update the BIOS of my Asus board (which you can easily upgrade through a USB stick formatted w/FAT).

My experience with the phenom is very good, I didn't run any benchmarks but I haven't run into any problems yet either.

Regarding crossfire, if your are going to use 2x, 3x or 4x you can only benefit from 4x if your using single slot GPU's, for example on my asus (4x xfire) can only use 3x since there is not enough space to place 4 HD4870's. So you could only use if i'm not mistaken 4x HD4850. But you should check the layout from the board to make sure you can actually make use of mentioned crossfire. Since manufacturers tend to overrate their products.

- Shugs

PS: I paid €222 for the 940 ~2 weeks ago online.

In the past few months I have learnt a lot about what to believe with reviews on these web sites and that includes Toms hardware. You only have to look at some of there test results in the overclocked AMD 940 vs i7 920 review. For one thing most people are able to run there Phenom 940 at 3.5 to 3.6 with the stock cooler and without touching the voltage. It is possible they got a bad sample so that's not too obvious. Then you look at the COD5 scores and they claim the 940 at 3.6gig bottlenecks at 70fps with a 4870x2. My budget 2.2gig Phenom with an 8800gt is averaging 45fps with %50 cpu usage. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see the test results are complete bull.

Obviously intel is looking after anyone that writes a favorable article for them. Maybe some free samples or advertising on there site to sweeten the deal. Before I get into too much trouble and get kicked off this site there are a lot of other sites that do it too. Overclockers Club is a great one for faking results in memory reviews. Unfortunately I purchased some memory based on one of there reviews. Now getting back back to AMD and Intel it really annoys me that I held off buying a Phenom for so long because of these tainted articles. The truth is the majority of people that purchase an AMD Phenom are very happy with them and that is the only thing that really matters.

 

[shugs]

In the past few months I have learnt a lot about what to believe with reviews on these web sites and that includes Toms hardware. You only have to look at some of there test results in the overclocked AMD 940 vs i7 920 review. For one thing most people are able to run there Phenom 940 at 3.5 to 3.6 with the stock cooler and without touching the voltage.

I can't agree more + in the reviews they mostly only mention DDR3 RAM (used for the intel build) in the specs once. In the conclusion the impact of DDR3 is never considered / accounted for. Which in my honest opinion most definately has an influence on performance, on top of that the considerable price difference...For me personally, the price/performance ratio of the phenom 2 is a good, since the additional price on intel does not justify the minimal performance increase (You probably won't even notice those couple %) and socket 775 probably won't last very long anymore either. So if I were you I would only look at 1366 or AM3 boards to be future proof.

I can personally can only advise the phenom II, if I were you I would wait a little bit longer since they should be coming out with AM3 now and if i'm not mistaken soon afterwards the 960 (march i think). So if you dont' want to overlock, wait a little bit. I waited 1 month til the 940 came out instead of buying the 9950BE and it was worth it.