Is the phenom 2 worth it?

[Quixote]

Why on earth should reviews benchmark clock for clock ?
It's right that the 3.2 GHZ Phenom is benched against a 2.66 GHZ i7 becuase those are the speeds of the chips.
Comparing price equivelents makes more sense.
It's just my opinion but I think spending £120 + on an AM3 board is throwing away half the value for money of the platform. £60-70 board, moderate clock, big saving makes most sense to me.

 

[Nelly]

It's just my opinion but I think spending £120 + on an AM3 board is throwing away half the value for money of the platform. £60-70 board, moderate clock, big saving makes most sense to me.

Each to their own but £60 extra not much less than a days pay for most people, wasnt a big deal for me but I fully agree with what your saying.

£746.99 inc VAT - Intel Core i7 965 3.20Ghz (Nehalem) Extreme Edition (Socket LGA1366) - Retail

£149.99 inc VAT - AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail

Now for people that dont overclock & just look at clock speeds, you know what people are going to buy.

 

[Quixote]

Yeah, it is personal preference to an extent. I tend to go for fairly frequent cheap upgrades.

 

[Rapido!]

Hell this sucks only 80fps with a crappy HD4890 on Resident Evil 5 on the AMD X4 955BE, my cpu sucks /sarcasm off

(a) The Resi test was done on a GTX 285 and (b) no-one said it sucks. Resi 5 is a very well optimised console port; it's going to run slick as hell on CPU's way older and slower than either of ours.

The significant point is that slowest i7, at stock, beats fastest Phenom II (clocked over 700 mhz higher) by nearly 20%, meaning massive clock-for-clock superiority in i7's favour. Perhaps not so important for Resident Evil 5. Very very important for something more demanding like Arma II.

Watch out for i7 to decimate Phenom II in Operation Flashpoint 2 later this year as well.

They should have done the test on the fastest Graphics Card

It's a CPU-benching article, and neither GTX 285 or 4890 are relics; their methodology was sound.

 

[95thrifles]

This isnt exactly them clocked at same speeds, but shows a reasonable comparison between the clocked 775s and PhII's, though only in one game at one res, not the most comprehensive I realise but least its a start

Edit: gfx card used is 4870 521mb, taken form techreport roundup here, if anyone wants to see full results

 

[Rroff]

snip

Try Lost Coast with multi GPU - would produce far more interesting results...

Theres such a mis-match of clock speeds and lack of information on some aspects that those results don't really mean much except maybe an indication of single thread performance (the E8600 being up so far means it can't be using more than 2 threads much at all).

 

[dmxdex2020]

Can't reach higher RAM speeds? You mean it can't support faster RAM? I'm going to let you in on a secret: You only need 800MHz RAM. Anything over that really is extra. Too much over that is overpriced and overkill. Anything under that is still usable, hell, i'm running 336MHz RAM at the minute and it doesn't do me any harm.

But the crosshair motherboard is fantastic build quality, it just oozes quality from every seam. The reviews are fantastic and it comes with thousands of features and extras that are perfect for starting you off. You're paying less for more.

EDIT) Wait, the MSI board is cheaper, isn't it? Definitely go for that then

You forget better higher ram speeds mean higher overclocks.

I will have a viruses program running in background will the phenom 2 still be good to buy?

 

[mmj_uk]

I found this interesting in the Res Evil article:

If running at the same clock speed the Nehalem beats the Deneb by almost 25 percent and the Yorkfield even by about 32 percent - even though the Core i7s are slowed down by the Geforce GTX 285. Smaller resolutions like 800 x 600 place the Core i7 more than 50 percent in front - so the "Runs great on Intel Core i7” logo hasn't been placed at the beginning of the benchmark without a reason.

In other words take GPU bottlenecks out of the equation as much as is possible and i7 destroys the competition, the same as it does in almost every other non-GPU bound application.

 

[Final8y]

Hey look! i7 utterly slaughtering Phenom II in gaming performance (Resident Evil 5)


Hey look! i7 utterly slaughtering Phenom II in gaming performance (Arma II)

They might be equals when it comes to the running of older games, but what's becoming apparent is that benchmarks of truly multi-threaded titles are more and more showing i7 to be the clearly superior architecture.

This is happening, and you should probably come to terms with it.

You contradict yourself, because one you say it maybe true when it comes to older games & then only show 2 very new benches with issues & said i should come to terms with it when i never made any notion that i would not because my comments where based on original facts & you do notice that no one else posted those bench marks because they did not know about them.
When its repeated elsewhere then i will make judgement.

What made you think i would have problems coming to terms with it.

 

[dmxdex2020]

can the phenom 2 x4 55 be clocked to 4ghz?

 

[Final8y]

Each to their own but £60 extra not much less than a days pay for most people, wasnt a big deal for me but I fully agree with what your saying.

£746.99 inc VAT - Intel Core i7 965 3.20Ghz (Nehalem) Extreme Edition (Socket LGA1366) - Retail

£149.99 inc VAT - AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail

Now for people that dont overclock & just look at clock speeds, you know what people are going to buy.

Yep that's why Alan Sugar has done so well even tho i think everything he has made is total rubbish but everything is affordable.

 

[95thrifles]

I found this interesting in the Res Evil article:



In other words take GPU bottlenecks out of the equation as much as is possible and i7 destroys the competition, the same as it does in almost every other non-GPU bound application.

I'm not taking sides in this, but using 800*600 res as an example is an appalling argument

 

[Final8y]

I'm not taking sides in this, but using 800*600 res as an example is an appalling argument

There has been examples of the i7 & PII switching places at high res which i game at when the GPU should be the bottleneck when the i7 was winning at medium res but at higher the PII was winning.

 

[Final8y]

Hell this sucks only 80fps with a crappy HD4890 on Resident Evil 5 on the AMD X4 955BE, my cpu sucks /sarcasm off

They should have done the test on the fastest Graphics Card also the reviewers did state this:

Yes you should feel bad that your only wasting 20FPS more than what the avg monitor can display

 

[gareth170]

can the phenom 2 x4 55 be clocked to 4ghz?

some 955 can and some 955 can't. same goes with any cpu really. it's just pot luck.

 

[dmxdex2020]

I heard the phenom 2 tri core's have be unlocked into quad core is this true? Also do any of the AMD 3 motherboards allow you to have 2 4890's both running at 16x?

 

[gareth170]

I heard the phenom 2 tri core's have be unlocked into quad core is this true? Also do any of the AMD 3 motherboards allow you to have 2 4890's both running at 16x?

some motherboards can unlock the core but 9 out of 10 it'll be unstable

there motherboard run dual crossfire at 16x

Asus M4A79T Deluxe AMD 790FX

MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD 790FX

 

[dmxdex2020]

some motherboards can unlock the core but 9 out of 10 it'll be unstable

there motherboard run dual crossfire at 16x

Asus M4A79T Deluxe AMD 790FX

MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD 790FX

The msi board defo does 2 cards at 16x. I will have to look into the fourth core being unlocked on a tri core.

 

[PermaBanned]

Because 20 seconds is the difference between life and death. Who even does video encoding? And even then, who does it so regularly that 20 seconds is the difference between £150 and spending £200, not counting motherboards and the cheaper memory you get.

And obviously, the i7 is going to supercharge your text editing and browsing experience. [/sarcasm]

On overclocking, i don't know why the 955 is so hard to overclock. The 940 was very easy. Maybe because the stock speed is so high. Really though, what program is going to use more than 3GHz? And since most can't use more than one core, i don't see the point in overclocking that high.

 

[DragonQ]

Your reasoning is truely laughable. If you don't require more cores or higher clock speed from your CPUs, why buy a 955BE over a cheaper AMD chip? Why spend £150 when you can spend £50 and get a budget CPU? XD