AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE & Phenom II X6 1055T Review

[Julio Franco]

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE & Phenom II X6 1055T Review

If money is no object then the six-core Core i7 980X processor is as good as it gets right now. Conversely, today’s announcement from AMD is meant to follow the same trend as with recent Phenom CPU releases. AMD is hoping to offer a more attractive six-core processor by providing their Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition and Phenom II X6 1055T models at far more realistic prices.

Read the full review at:
https://www.techspot.com/review/269-amd-phenom2-x6-1090T-and-1055T/

Please leave your feedback here.

 

[dividebyzero]

Nice bump in performance on the OC.
What was the power draw increase at 4GHz ?

 

[Guest]

Nice review Techspot but ugh those Phenom X6's are underwhelming. Im running a 955 with ddr3 atm but there is no way I will go anywhere near these things for an upgrade, though maybe if I was running a dual or tri core on an AM2+ board I would. Anyway if bulldozer is not AM3 compatible im going back to intel. That much is clear.

Sorry to say it and I know the fanbois will flame me for it but AMD's goose could be cooked after seeing that, these things have bearly made a dent on core I7 930.

I know they'll say "price this, performance that" but to AMD seriously guys you have got to get bulldozer out, your just flogging a dead horse now, no more mucking around get bulldozer going. Guess I have to keep on waiting for bulldozer news and pray for full AM3 compatibility.

 

[PaulWuzHere]

Nice read, The Hexa-core chip is a nice deal and will allow AMD to be more competitive in the multimedia market. I think I will hold onto my 940BE for a little while longer.

 

[dividebyzero]

Anyway if bulldozer is not AM3 compatible im going back to intel. That much is clear.

If Bulldozer is compatible with AM3 that implies that it will remain dual-channel memory, which will probably not be competitive with Intel's Sandy Bridge (the LGA2011 part especially).
As it stands it sounds like Bulldozer has a few (or more) problems. AMD seem quite enthusiastic regarding Llano (IGP) and Bobcat, but the silence is deafening regarding Bulldozer.

 

[Guest]

For a company that makes graphics cards as well as cpu's they haven't attempted at all to make the new 6 core even better than a old i5 at running games. Alot of budget gamer pc's usually go for Amd because they run exact same fps at half the price.

Amd will sell a lot of these for sure based on the fact that if you haven't bought an intel yet chances are you been waiting for the new amd chips and the idea of 6 cores vs 4 in marketing terms sounds better on paper (even if it's not better in testing or real world benchmarks).

 

[Guest]

WHAT A DISSAPOINTMENT . the price is right but it needs to be as it is struggling aginst quad cores which have lower clock speads. I think AMD knew this when they priced them up. We know that until we get more software that is optimised for Multicore we will not see the real performance of Hexacore. basically it was 4 men against 6 boyes. minor tweeking of archutecture will not do .
Bulldog and Bobcat need to deliver.

It's good to know that heat now isn't the big issue as it use to be for AMD and they can deliver turbo,

AMD will need to deliver soon. .

Hafiz Majid

 

[Guest]

So how is it that in games the difference between 1024x768 and 1920x1200 is only 10 fps....Seems fishy.

 

[Guest]

I just would like to point out that Intel Core i5 should be at 2.66 GHz not 2.80 GHz
https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/269/bench/Power.png

 

[Steve]

Guest said:
I just would like to point out that Intel Core i5 should be at 2.66 GHz not 2.80 GHz
https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/269/bench/Power.png

An obvious typo thanks it is now fixed.

Guest said:
So how is it that in games the difference between 1024x768 and 1920x1200 is only 10 fps....Seems fishy.

There is nothing fishy about the gaming results you just do not understand what is going on. What is going on is very simple, the CPU is creating a bottleneck and as a result the GPU performance is being limited. If the Radeon HD 5870 can easily average 200fps at 1920x1200 but you limit it with a processor that will only allow for 100fps at 1024x768 then you are going to see virtually the same amount of frames being rendered at higher resolutions as the GPU is capable of much more.

So based on that look at the Unreal Tournament 3 results. The Core i7 980 XE allowed for 323fps at 1024x768 and 218fps at 1920x1200 as this is the limit of this GPU setup at this resolution. This limit was also reached with the Core i7 975 EE and Core i7 930 processors.

Now the Phenom II X6 1090T was only able to render 187fps at 1024x768 and we already know that the Radeon HD 5870 is capable of much more at this resolution. Therefore increasing the resolution is not going to see much of a drop in performance until the GPU once again becomes slower than the CPU. Given we have seen an average of 218fps at 1920x1200 with the Core i7 processors the Radeon HD 5870 is not going to be maxed out by the Phenom II X6 1090T using the quality settings which we tested with.

 

[ET3D]

Guest said:
Anyway if bulldozer is not AM3 compatible im going back to intel. That much is clear

Well, hopefully if Bulldozer is not AM3 compatible it will still be able to beat Intel on performance or significantly on price/performance so your above mentioned decision will be the stupid course to take.

I'd like to say that including core utilisation with the gaming benchmarks was really enlightening and a great feature of this review.

I agree that the new CPU's are underwhelming, though I might still consider buying one as an upgrade for my 710 when their prices come down.

 

[yukka]

A quick check of the tables shows that my i7 920 still hasn't been matched for speed by AMD but the price looks to be the same. Not very exciting.

 

[Yad]

These two cpu should sell and a lot considering their price.
People will look at 2.8 Ghz and 6 cores and will be like woooww.
Not all customers out there read benchmarks and reviews,only a little percent does.

On summer i am gonna upgrade my pc and i am thinking of getting a 890x board + the T 1055 version.
I have an old Intel 2.2Ghz C2D so upgrading should be some hell of change for me.

 

[Per Hansson]

I'll second that I really liked the CPU utilization graphs in this review
Please include it with more games and apps in the future

 

[Chazz]

Guest said: Anyway if bulldozer is not AM3 compatible im going back to intel. That much is clear.

On one hand you want AMD to release a new architecture but, on the other hand you want them to release it on a old platform? And if they do not you will go to intel which seems to have no problems changing sockets with each processor release?

These processors are kinda underwhelming but, it seems you're venting your disappointment rather than making sense.

I've seen some good benchmarks for these processors here and there..but none provided such a complete picture as this site. AMD needs to lower the prices on these a little more..and they'll be a bargain. The benchmarks I've seen had these around the 920 and 980 in terms of performance so I didn't mind it's price point. That opinion has changed since seeing this.

 

[Guest]

I have a core i7-860, 4 core with hyper-threading, and based on real-world experience, only 2 cores (2 cores + hyper-threading = 4 total threads) were being used for 99% of the operations. When I used Adobe Premiere CS4 to test blue-ray encoding, it did finally use all cores and threads.

What this means is that most software is not written to take advantage of more than 4 cores at this time and thus the other two cores of a X6 are not going to be utilized for most people. If you are using it as a basic server used for virtualization purposes, then that is a different story...

 

[Guest]

Performance is kind of underwhelming, but the price (especially below) is excellent.

Just checked one of my favorite sites, FatWallet. One of the posters noticed that the CPU has a $50 rebate through Tiger Direct. If you use it in conjunction with Bing cashback of 12.3%, the price drops as low as $125 before taxes. Looks like shipping is included as well. Link to FW forums is:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1002351/

 

[KG363]

What was used to cool it on the overclock?

 

[slh28]

Damn, those results are a little disappointing. Was hoping these would give Intel a run for their money but it seems the world isn't even ready for 4 cores let alone 6.

Only impressive things ware the power consumption and the decent overclocking ability.

 

[dividebyzero]

Only impressive things ware the power consumption and the decent overclocking ability.

But not together:

System (890FX, HD 5850) idle -balanced (stock) : 87w
System idle-high performance (stock) : 107w
System 100% CPU load (stock) : 187w
System w/ 4.1GHz OC (1.425v) : 273w
Source
Of course this is one CPU and is very much a case of YMMV

A little disappointing that this little nugget seems to have been overlooked by virtually every online review amid the hoop-la.

 

[red1776]

But not together:

System (890FX, HD 5850) idle -balanced (stock) : 87w
System idle-high performance (stock) : 107w
System 100% CPU load (stock) : 187w
System w/ 4.1GHz OC (1.425v) : 273w
Source
Of course this is one CPU and is very much a case of YMMV

A little disappointing that this little nugget seems to have been overlooked by virtually every online review amid the hoop-la.

Holy moly rocky, I missed that as well.were these things binned as 'leaky'?

 

[Guest]

To Chazz

"On one hand you want AMD to release a new architecture"
Correct. I think Intel are the only ones who dont want them to do this, Intel are just loving AMD's inability to compete. It's pretty clear they need something new Chazz as these things are still effectively based on K8 and that was what 7 years ago.
"on the other hand you want them to release it on a old platform? "
Well it was actually their own plan to do this if you'll remember. They have stated it repeatedly in the past. Also they repeatedly tout the long term viability of their sockets.

I probably should have made it more clear in my first post but im lamenting the seeming lack of "drop in" upgradeablity to the AM3 platform, this platform looks like it wont be supported as well nor as long as AM2+. Clearly these thubans are no legit upgrade for a phenom 2 user. Unless your some sucker who likes to pay $300 for a 20% improvement.

So the question in regards to future upgrades then becomes, will bulldozer be AM3 compatible? If No we have (barring some miraculous shrink to 32nm phenom 2's and then this assumes motherboard manufacturers will offer bios updates, my gigabyte AM3 board doesn't even have a bios update for thuban!) no upgrade path other than the underwhemling thuban and this makes the AM3 platform no better than the Intel ones you deride. If Yes and even if they release some dual channel bulldozers and there is no real technical reson why they couldn't do this (according to various sources around the web), with say support for say ddr3 1866 or 2000 then at least all of us who (perhaps foolishly went AM3) will get a little more longevity out of the platform.
Look AMD are in real trouble here, bulldozer was supposed to be out last year, then it got put off till this year and now its supposed to be second half next year. Its becoming a joke, bulldozer is the duke nukem forever of processors! If I was framing a market on it being held back till 2012, I'd be offering 1.01 to 1!

Anyway for all interested look at this thread :
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=898409
Former AMD engineer Cliff Maier aka "cmaier" is giving them an informative pasting.

 

[ET3D]

I understand your frustration with the potential lack of an upgrade path, but that's just the way it is with processors. Even when a socket is kept, there's no guarantee of compatibility with newer CPU's. Intel for example had the 775 socket on the market for a long time, yet older boards wouldn't support newer CPU's, and I ran into this problem myself.

Without compatibility it the viability of Bulldozer will depend on whether it's compelling enough. I think it's hard to tell at this point whether it will be. It's certainly possible that Intel will continue to win at the high end, but AMD will have the better solution at the low end and mid range. That's a fine way to survive, as AMD is proving in graphics.

 

[Seraphim401]

I am sticking to my Phenom II X4 965!
Can't believe these cpu's are not distroying the i5 750 wich does not have hyper threading.

 

[Guest]

This is the first review where AMD is in the last place, Tomsharware and other places AMD was winning against i7 975 EE... Mmm this is very strange... Would Intel hace paid this review??? XD Only a joke but its strange that a quad core no HT can beat a 1090T