Phenom II reviews
- Thread starter Ateo
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Kyle's "argument" is that any Core 2 can reach 3.2GHz with ease so he doesn't need to test like priced parts. This of course makes no sense because he won't test this directly nor do an article comparing like priced parts directly at stock and OC'd. They'd be very similar, as has been shown.
Yeah I was confused a bit.
Well I've definitely run into E4xxx and E2xxx 65nm chips that won't do >3 GHz without gobs of volts. The Q series and E6xxx series and all of the 45nm chips I've touched seem to be happy enough to do 3.2 though. Even on stock volts sometimes.
It seems to be that if you really want a wild overclocking ride that the Wolfdale CPUs are the ticket to bliss.
Blazkowicz
Legend
but the chipset doesn't play such a big role on AMD system since the K8, at least for core stability ; bad stuff can be on the peripheral, i.e. southbridge side. But even then Intel had issues with an IDE controller recently (when dropping one IDE port).
My 50€ bastardized version of a already low end gygabite mobo works fine. crappy 100Mb ethernet controller, but I use an old 3COM instead and it has four PCI slots. No stability issue whatsoever (good PSU). Running a Sempron that cost me 27€ : that was still an upgrade as I came from socket A, third or fourth socket A mobo. AM2 is a big step up for me.
when/if I need an upgrade I'll look towards a phenom 2 X3, with or without L3 cache : that will probably be a great budget processor. The current phenom X3 8450 is cheap enough but a power hog and lowish single thread performance.
So for those that don't overclock the PhII is looking like a stellar bargain compared to the faster quads from Intel.
My Q6600 will come damn close, win some, loose some at 3.2GHz, so you point is flawed.
Well, for those who already have an AM2 system, sure. For those without a computer at all, I still think it's a wash depending on what you do.
You can argue that an AM2 system could be built "cheaper" if you want to compare it to a Q9550, but it will (more often than not) also have less performance than the Q9550. If you stack up a Q9300 against a PII-920, I think you'd find that they're pretty much identical in both performance and price, and the Q9300 will use less power and will overclock just as easily as the 920. Where's the "stellar bargain" now?
It's a great way to finally get them to catch up, to be sure. And for those folks who have a compatible motherboard, I might be able to agree with the "stellar bargain" mantra. But from a BIG reseller like Dell, HP, or IBM -- or from someone who is right now starting a new PC from scratch, I think it's still a wash at best.
It's flawed for the 3% of PC users that OC...for the rest who haven't even a clue how to the point is completely valid.
And then you overclock the Phenom II and which is winning? Again, this is why it is very rough to compare and assume a processor will OC well. You can't, reality and facts say otherwise. That is why HardOCP's setup is flawed, it is making assumptions for no reason other than ease of review.
Newegg currently doesn't list a Q9300 but their Q9400 is $30 more than the PII 920. Not really wanting to make assumptions from that though. But again, depending on the type of system you're building the motherboard cost could be way different. Limited win? Certainly, but a win nonetheless.
The thing to me is right now annoying time to build. You're on pins and needles waiting for an HD4000 series refresh, you're not exactly sure what to expect from Core i5 or its time frame, LGA775 seems like a dead end, and so does AM2+. Yeah, I'm the type that usually goes for the "build now, stop waiting" philosophy but honestly right now I think I'd even wait, at least a little bit. Maybe see how Core i7 motherboard prices pan out and save in the mean time.
But, I think Phenom II is as close to a "win" or "victory" that they could hope. They're going to be helped a bit by platform cost, that's it.
when I first read this I thought hang on intel never made a pentium 2 running at 920mhz
I'm honestly not sure what to shorten it to. Phenom II is a bit annoying to type out and PIIX4 just feels stupid.
440BX FTW.
Roll with FE2...
Yea, it's easy as hell. Far superior in terms of ease of use to most of the cooling assemblies that arrive from AMD.
Oh I dunno bout that. 775's push pins are ok once you've done it a few times, but it's still rather unnerving. You have to get the rotation of the pin-locks right and then line them up carefully so you don't bend/snap off one of the fingers and render your heatsink useless. And once you get them in the holes, you usually have to push down with enough force to obviously bend the board and that just can't be good for traces. I don't think anyone I know has enjoyed working with 775's retention design. When I first worked on 775, I was unsure of how to tell when the pins were locked in and I'm thinking that is how it goes for most people on the first attempt.
The AMD method is as easy as it gets and is pretty much foolproof in my experience. The frame around the socket lines the cooler up nicely, and then the lever cranks it on tightly without any of the nerve-wracking screwdriver-in-clip nonsense from earlier sockets. And the heatspreaders have solved the core-cracking issue from Socket A/370.
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