The Phenom II X4 810 & X3 720: AMD Gets DDR3 But Doesn't Need It
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 9, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
When AMD launched the Phenom II X4 940 and 920 I called it a True Return to Competition. With the rest of the lineup now more fleshed out, it's truly a return to competition. At every price point that AMD targets, it has produced a CPU competitive to Intel's offerings.
These new CPUs from AMD are good overclockers, good performers and they don't have any real drawbacks unlike their predecessors. The most interesting CPU is the Phenom II X3 720; at $145 its only Intel competitors are the Core 2 Duo E7500 and the Core 2 Duo E8400, both of which are dual-core CPUs. The extra core in the 720 can provide a clear advantage in well threaded workloads, not to mention that it's got 1.5MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache at its disposal. In applications where the third core isn't very useful then the 720 loses its performance advantage, which I suspect will be the majority of mainstream workloads.
The DDR3 question is easily answered: wait. While DDR2 isn't an option for Core i7, on all other platforms it just makes sense simply because of the high cost of DDR3 right now. By the end of the year we won't be having this debate as DDR2/DDR3 will be at the same price, but if you're building today don't even bother looking at DDR3 unless you're building Core i7. The performance benefits aren't worth it for Phenom II, so while AM3 sounds cool, it's not necessary today. Thankfully AM3 CPUs will work in AM2+ motherboards, so you aren't forced into a relationship with DDR3 if you're not ready.
On the CPU side, what we end up with is a buyer's market with tons of choices. At the high end, if you can manage, the Core i7 is simply in a league of its own. Honestly, if I were spending close to $300 on a CPU today I'd do my best to make up for the differences in platform costs and go with an i7 over any Core 2 or Phenom II alternative.
At the low $200 price point you have the Phenom II X4 940 vs. the Core 2 Quad Q9400 once again. The 940 wins in the vast majority of cases and gets the nod at $225. The Phenom II X4 920 isn't as clear cut of a winner, as it competes with the Q8300 or the Q9400 depending on whether you want to spend slightly less or slightly more. Against the Q9400 it loses, against the Q8300 it should be a closer call. At $195 I'd call the decision torn, but I'd lean towards Intel. The same is true about the Phenom II X4 810, it actually does a lot better than I expected it would given the reduction in cache size and at $175 it is competitive with the Q8200. The strongest showing in today's introduction seems to be the Phenom II X3 720. If you do any amount of offline 3D rendering work or use any other heavily threaded apps, you'll appreciate the third core, although in most other applications the E7500/E8400 are competitive despite only being dual-core parts.
Long term this strategy can't work for AMD. Intel can make 3 E7500s in the space that AMD makes a single Phenom II X3 720; the pricing pressure is great for the consumer, but again, I'm not sure how great it is for AMD in the long run.
Other than the clear cut i7 recommendation at the high end, thanks to aggressive price cuts and competitive CPUs, you can actually have your pick of which side you want to go with here. I'd say what it really boils down to is who can deliver the best retail pricing on CPUs and motherboards. Overclockers will probably prefer the Intel route as both Phenom II and Core 2 can overclock to similar levels, but Core 2 is faster at the same clock speed. Intel does have more room to drive prices down if it should so desire and perhaps it will, although I do worry about what will happen to AMD's Phenom II strategy when Core i5 arrives later this year. While Phenom II is competitive with Core 2, remember that it's an old architecture now. Turn to the Core i7 results for where AMD will need to start looking come this fall...
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zagortenay - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link
When you click that Intel logo on the left hand side, Anandtech becomes an Intel site. Only a fool beleives Anandtech is promoting Intel for free and I beleive the cunning Intel gets what she pays for.Hey Anand this is not acceptable! Hey Anand do you hear me!
swaaye - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
I've always thought Anand was more of an AMD guy, going by how he names his AMD and ATI reviews. :)swaaye - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link
Phenom doesn't really need much bandwidth to do its thing for most applications.http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-phenom-x4-98...">http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-phenom-x4-98...
starx5 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link
I can see intel logo on the 1eft of this site.You must independent from intel's hand.
I know Core i7 is totally jerk in gaming.
starx5 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link
I think anandtech is intel's doll.refer to this reviews
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii_7...">http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii_7...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-810...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-810...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-920...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-920...
Core i7 is absolutely a gaming failer!!
goinginstyle - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
I think it is more of a case of those sites listed being an utter failure at proper benchmarking.jchan2 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link
Interesting.... I wonder whats up with that?7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link
They also kind of contradict their own article later on saying:"Benchmark note:
We moved towards a new 64-bit environment for all our test. This entailed new software updates for our benchmarks plus we replaced a lot of our tests with different software. This means that if you compare the results published in this review with other processor reviews from Guru3D.com, the numbers might not add anymore up due to different software and tests."
So unless they reran an Intel system using 64-bit software I don't know where the data came from for the i7 and E8400 platforms?
7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link
Possibly even more weird in the Guru3D article is the test system only had 2 gigs of ram?!? That just seems crazy even with Vista 32-bit. You can easily get some system oddness. I mean heck, 4gig should be the MINIMUM in a review of new hardware. I can't tell if that would help or hurt, but it should definitely add another layer of complexity to figuring out what means what in this article.7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link
Seems like (in the OC'ers club review) they were GPU limited or at least entering the compression range in the majority of circumstances. They used a GTX 260 (216) which is definitely a bit underpowered for the latest generation of CPU's. Most of their graphics settings are too high once they get above 1024X768 to see a large difference in frame rates. Yes you can say they are still all playable, but it makes seeing the actual power of the CPU less important.Guru3d article again is weird. The biggest problem I see here is what the test setup is for the Intel i7 system? I skimmed the article (it's huge), but never could find it. As for the testing again heavily GPU-limited over about 1280X1024 (and in some cases literally right off the bat at 1024X768). Once they hit 1600X1200 with the single 280 the cpu's have just stalled waiting for the GPU. This still doesn't explain the Crysis: Warhead numbers which show the i7 LOWER than the AMD cpu's @ 1600X1200. My guess is the percent error in the testing is large and so pretty much anything within 5% is equal (again denoting the GPU-bottleneck).
I won't comment on Tom's as that site has lost all respect with me.
But we've all known that gaming performance with the latest (or even previous generation CPU's) when not also using CF/SLI or stupidly low resolutions DOES NOT make a huge difference with most games (some RTS/FlightSim/FarCry2/etc. excluded). decided to try that way back with Conroe to show how it wasn't so great for gaming (testing everything under completely GPU-limited scenarios).
This isn't news.