• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Phenom 2 listed

the thing is that AMD can price it quite high if they want, purely because the i7 solution all told is still far more expensive. if the AMD chip was £300, add a £100 for a top end mobo, £40 for mem and you're done. INtel £230 the cheapest cheap, £230 the cheapest mobo and you're already at the same price, then you need realistically more than 3gb's, so next choice is 6gb of ddr3 which is going to set you back at least £180.

Does anyone actually know if the midrange i7 stuff will be triple channel ddr3, or just dual channel setups? Because dual would make them significantly cheaper as mobo's can be far thinner with far less traces and routing problems, though without the bandwidth you would almost certainly see a drop off in performance in the things it excels in, encoding and the like.
 
u dont need upgrade your memory it supports ddr2. so at beginning i guess it would be 300£ cpu 200£ mob still bit pricey but still cheaper then top end i7
 
You can bet your life that it will be a straight swap from a $ sign to a £ sign though. We always get ripped off and with the pound being practically worthless it will only make things worse. Much more aggressive pricing than the Core i7 chips though. Be interesting to see how they perform once they are out in the wild.
 
drunkenmaster said:
the thing is that AMD can price it quite high if they want, purely because the i7 solution all told is still far more expensive.
Click to expand...

IMO that would be a mistake on AMD's part. The only way they are going to make a proper dent in Intel's market share is to sell cpu's that are cheaper at the same performance level.
 
drunkenmaster said:
the thing is that AMD can price it quite high if they want, purely because the i7 solution all told is still far more expensive. if the AMD chip was £300, add a £100 for a top end mobo, £40 for mem and you're done. INtel £230 the cheapest cheap, £230 the cheapest mobo and you're already at the same price, then you need realistically more than 3gb's, so next choice is 6gb of ddr3 which is going to set you back at least £180.

Does anyone actually know if the midrange i7 stuff will be triple channel ddr3, or just dual channel setups? Because dual would make them significantly cheaper as mobo's can be far thinner with far less traces and routing problems, though without the bandwidth you would almost certainly see a drop off in performance in the things it excels in, encoding and the like.
Click to expand...

Lynnfield and P55 are supposed to be dual channel I think.
 
There a couple of issues that make me believe that the Deneb will come down in price (whatever its initial one is) much faster than i7.

That is:

a) AMD is not ripping off its userbase as all the current AMD owners need only to upgrade their cpu and that is gonna be fairly cheap compared to an upgrade to i7+mobo+ram.

b) Even for intel owners the upgrade to an AMD Deneb is gonna be cheaper when compared to an i7 setup (and likely to be cheaper per performance output as well as Deneb will come close to i7 _IF_ the hype is true)

c) The simple fact that existing mobos/ram for Deneb are cheap and that all current AMD owners can simply buy the cpu will result to a much quicker adaptation of the new platform by pc users than the i7 as the cost is not that much. Quicker sales will lead the retailers to bigger orders from the wholesalers and they will be able to pass considerable savings to the customers. Imagine a retailers that orders i7 batches now, I don't think they are expecting to sell them like hot cakes with the accompanied mobo/ram costs AND under the current economic climate - therefore orders will be limited in size and thus not achieving much savings that can be passed on. You also need to factor in further interest rate cuts which will also assist retailer to get cheaper credit for mass purchases.

d) I'd be inclined to believe that AMD will hit Intel on a price level as its chips are not gonna be superior to the i7 yet and that's generally the strategy it has followed on other business sectors (and the wisest one).

All in all, if the £ doesn't go downhill and _at least_ remains where it is I would speculate on a much quicker price reduction for the Deneb than the i7.

Based on this speculation, with its inherent risks, I intend to build an AMD rig now at Xmas with a dirt cheap AMD cpu and then around Spring when the Deneb prices have passed the early-adopters-frenzy-hike I will upgrade to a brand new cpu. As I have been told if you care to buy a Black Edition you can get away with very cheap ddr2 ram (around 40£ for 4gb) so that's a bonus on keeping the costs down.

Regards,

Kgi
 
psychas said:
u dont need upgrade your memory it supports ddr2. so at beginning i guess it would be 300£ cpu 200£ mob still bit pricey but still cheaper then top end i7
Click to expand...

I was talking about the intel setup which does need ddr3 and at least 3 sticks with 3gigs not being a decent amount for gaming on vista that takes it to £180 for 6gigs ddr3, considering thats the cheapest pack OCUK sell and you can get 16gb of decentish ocz mem for £160 its not at all cheap to go the intel route.

While the AMD chip might be £250, a completely top end dfi board is £120 and there are cheaper boards and more to come, and 4gigs of fine ddr2 is £40, its a far far cheaper setup than I7

Lightnix said:
Lynnfield and P55 are supposed to be dual channel I think.
Click to expand...


I thought it might be simply based on price, even if you don't use 6 sticks of memory or 6gb, the slots are there, the slots are routed and working and that makes the motherboards cost a lot, need more power circuitry, more routing, more signal problems so more layers in general and thats why they cost so much. Even with a cheaper chipset a P55 with triple channel mem would only be £30 cheaper as chipsets don't cost that much. AS soon as you drop down to dual channel you're suddenly missing a hell of a lot of bandwidth and thats going to do several things, its going to definately effect just how hard all 4 cores can work underload, which could severly effect its performance in things like encoding. Gaming it shouldn't matter, numbers elsewhere will be interesting though, frankly very very few people, less than 1% are likely to spend more than £200 on a board, because lets be honest, its nuts for most people.

The midrange i7's vs phenom could be a very very interesting fight.
 
drunkenmaster said:
While the AMD chip might be £250, a completely top end dfi board is £120 and there are cheaper boards and more to come, and 4gigs of fine ddr2 is £40, its a far far cheaper setup than I7
Click to expand...

It's not an upgrade that I would be tempted by though, being on S775 I'd be better off getting a top of the range Core2. I can't see these phenom2 chips being as quick as an i7 either, although no one really knows for sure right now.

If I'm going to go the trouble of buying a new mobo as well as a cpu I don't think I would do it for another DDR2 set up. i7 and AM3 would be where I would look.

I can only really see the phenom2 being tempting to current AM2 owners and AMD fanboys.
 
AM3 versions aren't far off though, which means, cheaper chip, cheaper mobo's and only dual channel mem needed, so even their ddr3 setup is cheaper.

At the moment, most benchmarks show the normal phenom matching and surpassing the c2q's at higher speeds, 3Ghz and above, and a phenom 2 is looking to be a 20-30% boost clock for clock. But relatively speaking a decent 775 board over to a phenom 2 is rather a lateral move. However if you were going for a better mobo and chip i'd make the switch personally.
 
I recently purchased a 775 board, but would be tempted by the new phenom's if they can perform better than the current c2d's and more in line with i7.

Otherwise id rather save £120 and buy a better C2D than my current q6600.
I mainly game on my PC though so i doubt i would see much improvement on either. id be better off spending the 200-300 on a better GPU.
 
Anybody else spot that the 940 with unlocked multiplier is only about £35 more?

- Huw

EDIT: Assuming that the 940 is £230ish, then it's nearest i7 rival is the 920, which is locked, has less stock clock, requires a new motherboard, but has 2MB more L3 (the 940 has much more L2 though). Tomshardware (pinch of salt) report virually no gain from hyperthreading or triple channel, so I think we're going to be seeing something very special from AMD.

Hell, you could buy the best AM2+ board on the market with your 4GB of DDR2 and you'd meet the 920 with the cheapest board!
 
Last edited:
Huw_Dawson said:
Anybody else spot that the 940 with unlocked multiplier is only about £35 more?

- Huw

EDIT: Assuming that the 940 is £230ish, then it's nearest i7 rival is the 920, which is locked, has less stock clock, requires a new motherboard, but has 2MB more L3 (the 940 has much more L2 though). Tomshardware (pinch of salt) report virually no gain from hyperthreading or triple channel, so I think we're going to be seeing something very special from AMD.

Hell, you could buy the best AM2+ board on the market with your 4GB of DDR2 and you'd meet the 920 with the cheapest board!
Click to expand...
no need for a new motherboard, the 920 will work in a am2+ motherboard. all am3 cpu's will work in a am2+ motherboard with ddr2.

the AM3 chips will also run with DDR2.. the am3 chips as both ddr2 and ddr3 memory controllers ..

AMD has confirmed that AM3 processors will work on AM2 motherboards. However, AM2 processors will not work on AM3 motherboards because AM2 processors lack the DDR3 memory controller
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM3

http://event.asus.com/mb/AM3_CPU_Support/
 
Last edited:
DDR2 will be plenty fast enough, my AM2+ board will run AM3 cpus WITH HyperTransport3 so I only miss out on DDR3 which isn't a problem, DDR2 can be ran plenty quick enough on tighter timings.
 
This is sounding better and better. Me save money for New mobo and CPU.
Unfortunatly I had a q6600 to carry over on my last build.
I was going to build a Phenom, but couldnt bring myself to sell the q6600 as its been fantastic!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom