Phenom II X2 555 Vs. Pentium G6950: New Budget Dual-Core Titans

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bak0n[/nom]The thing that annoys me is that they compare the CPU cost to CPU cost. Have you ever looked at the price difference between a motherboard running an AMD chip-set vs. an Intel's? Your looking at a minimum $35.00 difference. [/citation]

No. A decent AMD board will cost about $100, and so will a decent H55 or P55 board.

Overclockers aren't going to pick rock-bottom parts. Just as I'd expect a budget overclocker to splurge a few dollars for a cooler, I expect them to get a promising overclocking board instead of the cheapest they can find.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bustapr[/nom]it would've been a lot more fair if you compared the pentium and Phenom processors at the same clock speeds. But it was a good try and an almost great article. I still dont understand why you put them up against a core i5.[/citation]

There is no $100 core i5. The only new Intel CPU that is at a comparable price to the 555 is the G6950.

I do mention that I include the i5 750 as reference to see how close the overclocked budget CPUs can perform to it.

 

[megamanx00]

I can see alot of burnt out Pentium G6950s in the forum future, but the potential overclock just seems too good to not try and push that poor little CPU . Glad to see AMD is still trying to push on the low end. Still need that 4th instruction decoder though.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]pei-chen[/nom]Quite an incomplete article. I would bench X2 555, G6950 and i3-530 to find out the best budget dual core.[/citation]

Our goal for this article wasn't to find the best dual core at any price, our goal was to find the best $100 dual core CPU. I do mention that we'll be comparing all of the sub-$200 lineup soon, that will include a lot more models.

[citation][nom]pei-chen[/nom]The 1.5v on X2 555 is also way too high. It hasn’t killed itself yet but I have reservation about it finishing a two year upgrade cycle.[/citation]

I disagree. I've admitted I was a bit naive when it comes to the new Clarkdales, but I've been oc'ing Phenom IIs since they came out and 1.5V is easy peasy as long as you make sure the temps are down.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]ZeekTheGeek[/nom]Well duh the 4.41GHz is unsustainable... Should have benchmarked with something SUSTAINABLE in over clocking instead of being lazy and using something that cannot be tested it would have at least shown some sort of increase and comparison against AMD.[/citation]

Please read the article. As stated, we will be redoing the comparison with a sustainable overclock in a follow up as soon as we can.

The overclocked G6950 data was included for curiosity's sake but we in no way claim this is a valid sustainable result, in fact I go far out of my way to say otherwise.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]carlhenry[/nom]its apples to apples because they compared on the given price point, not on the feature set. it'd be apples to pineapples if you compared a 100$ cpu vs a 200$ cpu eh?[/citation]

You're totally missing the point. Totally. Please read before responding.

The Phenon X2 and G6950 both have two L1 caches, that can be divided into data and instruction caches. For whatever reason, he describes the Phenom as 2 x 128K, but the Pentium as 4 x 32K. Meaning, he's describing the Phenom's cache with both instruction and data combined, but the Pentium without. It's not like the Pentium has four cores and each has a seperate cache.

So, it's got nothing to do with cost, just the way he's describing it isn't the same for both.

 

[endorphines]

I'd just like to point out that it's no wonder the processor died. it's not a 45nm part anymore, so 1.475v is far in excess of what it can take.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/Details.aspx?sSpec=SLBMS

It's limit is listed as 1.40v

 

[masterasia]

What kind of test is this? Why did Tom's have to overclock the G6950 so far as to kill it? I've always been a fan of AMD's low end stuff because they pretty much beat out Intel's stuff most of the time. The Phenom II X2 555 is pretty cool, but for a few more bucks, the X4 955 or 945 would be a better option for me.

 

[sonofliberty08]

only noobs that trust intel or buy dell nowadays

 

[Kithzaru]

Thank you for the article, that was indeed a very good match up. I look forward to the follow review of the G6950.

ps. Don't feel bad about killing the CPU, it's bound to happen at least once in everyone career ; )

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]DarkMantle[/nom]On "Test Systems And Benchmarks" it says "Mushkin PC3-107003 x 2,048MB, DDR3-1333, CL". Was this a mistake when writting the article or did you really tested 3 dual channel processors with 3 memory sticks?.[/citation]

Thanks for catching that, yes it was two sticks for dual-channel. Fixed!

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]You're totally missing the point. Totally. Please read before responding.[/citation]

I don't think he was, it does seem like your first post implies the 555 and G6950 aren't appropriate to be compared. If that's not what you meant by your posts then I suggest you might want to clarify what you mean because I don't think your post communicates your thoughts very clearly.

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]The Phenon X2 and G6950 both have two L1 caches, that can be divided into data and instruction caches....it's got nothing to do with cost, just the way he's describing it isn't the same for both.[/citation]

As far as this, you've got a point and I should have made it more consistent. Fixed!

 

[buzznut]

I must have read another article. It seems obvious the Phenom II at stock speeds wins most benchies. At $100, its a very competitive product. I agree with the reader who asked about including the quad core Phenom at $100. Seems like a natural for comparison.

Otherwise I found this to be an enlightening article, and more signs of AMD's determination to be competitive again.

It seems like the Intel CPU is a budget htpc chip, while the Phenom 2 555 is a budget overclockers gaming dual core. If I had the Pentium, I don't think I would overclock it at all after reading this article.

 

[PeterHighlander]

I've been overclocking for years... about 15. In recent years, on highly OC'd Intel systems (since AMD don't highly OC), I've had failure. In one case my 1.6A died after 3 years... on the surface this doesn't sound bad however, it was. I hand down my old machines and I won't call performance that frys a chip free when it dies in 3 years or less.

I'd love to see a few longer term articles where Toms crank'd up these Intel super OCs and ran them from 24/7... then see how long it takes for the system to melt. Who here allows their OC rig to run 50C over ambient!? That's silly. About 55C TOTAL is my limit, everything else leads to instability when OCing.

How about a ‘real’ OC Tom’s? Obviously this chip will fry when you let the temp hit nearly 70C therefore any benchmarks that produce that kind of heat should be tossed. I want to know what the speed is at a real temp, like 55C, work the bench from there.

FYI, I run 3x Athlon X2s,1x C2D and 1x C2Q. Without a doubt the Intel OCs more, however since I demand stability 10 hours a day, I rarely obtain the speeds posted by review sites. Since Intel tends to OC at least as well as AMD, I’d love to see some more benchmarks where you hit the max AMD overclock then match that speed with the Intel.

 

[ingodwestream]

this is exactly what we need. Strong AMD competition and consumer support. This is what keeps prices down and new innovation and performance coming. I am advocating AMD to my customers for budget to mid level PCs. SUPPORT AMD and we all win. good article. As to overclocking. I do mild overclocks on stock coolers for all my clients except for customer-requested quiet office builds.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]PeterHighlander[/nom]Who here allows their OC rig to run 50C over ambient!? That's silly. About 55C TOTAL is my limit, everything else leads to instability when OCing.[/citation]

That's load temp under Prime stress testing, there's not much else can push temps higher.

You'll certainly never hit Prime temps in real apps or games. Realistically, the CPU will never get that hot.

 

[bliq]

[citation][nom]burnley14[/nom]It's pretty much a free way to get better performance, so I'm glad they have so many articles about it.[/citation]

It's not exactly free- you pay with more noise (due to higher cooling requirements), more power consumption, and sometimes with the need for more expensive components. That's why I'm not that excited about overclocking until you get to the very top end where the next faster chip might be $200+ more expensive. For chips in the mainstream, if you have a care about any of that stuff, it's usually not worth it.

On the business side, I'd never, ever advocate overclocking because reliability becomes a concern.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

NO! The Pentium G6950 used in this article can't play Crysis... or anything else for that matter.

 

[AsAnAtheist]

Let's not forget for the lucky few who manages to unlock their 550's cores, and those who will (once readily available) unlock their 555's cores. I got my 550 unlocked/over clocked to 3.7 ghz so I am glad there, and for $100 Intel has nothing to go against that..

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]blackjellognomes[/nom]More like 50% and 5%, I think.[/citation]

I think your estimate of 50% of the readership here overclocking is probably relatively accurate, but you're way off with the percentage of the general population that overclocks. I bet that less than 5% of the general population even knows what overclocking is let alone has a computer that could overclock and chooses to do so. Pretty much the only machines out there that even can be overclocked are hand-made desktops- either from a local whitebox maker or by yourself. Those are rare as not only do laptops (which are pretty much universally not overclockable) outsell desktops here by a large margin, but most desktops are OEM-built non-overclockable units. I'd hazard a guess that the percentage of the general public that overclocks is well under one percent, probably more like 0.1%.

 

[AMW1011]

http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLBMS

Going .5v over the max spec. voltage is about the limit without extreme cooling, and even then it is dangerous. You went .75v over, not a good idea.

As an aside, can you perhaps throw the Athlon II X4 620 and the Athlon II X2 250 in the mix so we can get a better idea of price vs performance?

 

[Guest]

Why is the i5 750 included in these comparisons?

The only reason I could see for having it would have been if you had managed to unlock the two disabled cores in the 555, and that would obviously have brought its multi-threaded performance, especially x264 encoding, MUCH closer to the i5 750.

I think readers would also be interested in the amount of overclocking possible on the unlocked cpu, but I guess Tom's is not the place to see it.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]AMW1011[/nom]As an aside, can you perhaps throw the Athlon II X4 620 and the Athlon II X2 250 in the mix so we can get a better idea of price vs performance?[/citation]

I did mention we're working on a sub-$200 CPU comparison which will include all the new AMD and i3/i5/Pentium CPUs. Hopefully it'll be here by the end of Feb.

 

[Guest]

Thats a weird headline. I'd say Nehalem-EX vs. Power7 would be more of a Battle of the Titans.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

As usual thanks for including some benchmarks for mainstream applications.