Final Thoughts
The Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition does little to improve upon the performance of AMD's hexa-core CPU series. However, it does help improve the value of these high-end desktop processors by making the 1090T BE model even cheaper.
With an MSRP of $295, the Phenom II X6 1090T was once strategically placed against the Core i7 930, but the latter has since been replaced by the Core i7 950 at this price point. When we first tested the Phenom II X6 1090T processor in April, we found the Core i7 930 to be faster in most of our real-world tests. The Intel CPU dominated all of our application and gaming benchmarks. Games such as Company of Heroes and Resident Evil 5 heavily favored the Core i7 930.
When it came to our encoding tests, the Phenom II X6 1090T fared a lot better, especially when testing with HandBrake. Nevertheless, for intensive 3D work, video encoding, or Excel modeling it seemed as though the Core i7 930's hyper-threading got it over the line in most scenarios. The Phenom II X6 1090T's only tangible advantage over the Core i7 930 was its lower power consumption
With the arrival of AMD's Phenom II X6 1100T, we can draw the same exact conclusion in regards to performance and price. It has great power consumption levels, overclocking abilities, and platform compatibility. The fact that someone who purchased their motherboard four years ago can buy a six-core processor with no other necessary upgrades is quite amazing. It should be noted that we don't expect performance to be much different if you are using the AM2 platform.
The Phenom II X6 processors quickly proved to be more overclocking friendly than their X4 counterparts and we easily broke the 4.0GHz barrier this time, reaching a stable 4.10GHz overclock. With limited time to play around with the Phenom II X6 1100T, we were happy with the 4.10GHz result and found that it provided substantial performance gains.
Again, the Phenom II X6 1100T is nothing new from AMD as it simply offers a small frequency increase over the 1090T. Since both processors are "Black Edition" products they're essentially the same chip, except the 1100T costs at least 15% more. Meanwhile, the older Phenom II X6 1090T gets a refresh in the form of a lower price point at only $230, which is 20% cheaper than the most affordable Core i7 processor. We suspect those in the know will simply forget about the new 1100T and opt for the cheaper 1090T instead.