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** The Official Phenom II 920/940 Review/Overclocking Thread **

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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33,188
Its not really late, its when they could. I've said in other threads, essentially their lack of production capacity hurt them in the short term but was always completely unavoidable. When you get to good as they did the demands for their chips left them with massive problems filling orders and as such couldn't shut down to switch to 65nm fast, which delayed their 45nm switch etc, etc. Essentially if they had one more fab this whole time they'd have brought in 65/45nm same time as Intel and been more competitive throughout, they'd also not have to skimp on core size as much as they did on P1 they would have had P2 straight off the bat a year ago and probably have a revised better P2 to go on 45nm 6 months ago. Bulldozer is there nearest real architecture upgrade and very little is known about it. WIll be interesting but its been in the works for a while, it might well be the chip after that which is finally free from limited budgets/timeframes and not designed to be as small and efficient as possible and might be designed more for all out speed and damn the cost. Thats what massive financial backing allows.

The incredibly quick switch to 45nm rather than the years it took to gradually move to 65nm is basically down to short term profits not being important due to that backing, they just said, fab 36 or fab 38(not sure which) offline, heres 10million go install the 45nm as quick as possible, they also paid TCSM i believe a shedload of cash to get their hands on some of their 45nm fab kit. This would never have happened without the Dubai's group money, backing and the financial stability they now have to say screw short term profits. But chips are LONG cycles in the making, its not we made the Ath 64, now lets make the X2, and the X4, X4 was probably in the works before the Ath 64 launched. Likewise Bulldozer has been in the works for a couple years and it will really be that next chip 3 years from now maybe that is just design for pure power. That will be interesting to say the least, also because their 6billion dollar new fab might be up and running by then.

But either way, the AM3 version even with ddr2, once we start getting similar uncore speeds to the i7 series you'll start to see just how important that is to the benchmarking/real world speed. Its a very real limitation on these chips at the second with early yields, though some certainly go higher with good air cooling which no reviews took into account. The Q series doesn't have it, the Phenom's could literally have 10-20% untapped performance waiting to be let out, at that stage they should clearly beat the Q series, and be closer but not close enough I fear to the i7. Still vastly better value.
 
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Soldato
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
11,862
Location
Hamilton
All of those reviews bar - Firingsquad, Hardwarecanucks, Legit Reviews - either have no information on overclocking, or just use brainless multiplier overclocking.

Sadly AMD brainfarted and decided to ship the review samples with an 790GX board rather than a 790FX board. I can't understand why. Most of the reviews just went with the 790GX board, although there are some exceptions.

Generally speaking though all of the reviews are just bland rehashes of existing information - Dragon platform, pictures of the chip, all of AMD press releases before the launch etc.
 
Associate
Joined
12 May 2006
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1,744
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UK
The Phenom II does look like a very nice processor but I still think that Intel will still be top dog for the whole of this year, unless AMD brings out a surprise chip.
 
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Associate
Joined
23 May 2008
Posts
420
Hey give them some credit now :)

Kentsfield itself was a remarkable chip for its time, and Yorkfield built upon that, which is why many of us do not see i7 as being a worthy upgrade yet...

While it is a solidly established fact that i7 does not give a proper price per performance ratio when benching games -- although it does beat all the high end quads, including QX's -- the gain in other departments are significant enough for others to warrant an upgrade. You've got to give credit to Intel where it's due. :) But yes, I do agree that the mobos and the RAM is still very expensive but also do agree that this is just the way it is. AMD chose to make it work on mobos and RAMs that were already cheap. Just like if Intel were to release another Q10000 on a 775 :) Keep the same mobo and the RAM, just plonk in the CPU.

This should bring up an interesting phase in my opinion. It is definitely worth for the AM2/AM3 owners to get the P2's whereas those that use 775 would actually prefer going the Intel route I believe. CPUs like Q8x00 and Q9x00 would finally have a place in the market. I wondered for a long time what Intel's motives for releasing these chips were, and perhaps they knew AMD's P2 performance range ahead of time. It would be interesting to see Intel's reaction and their next price cuts in the whole Q family.
 
Soldato
Joined
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Plymouth
Are their any review sites that have overclocked without just raising the multiplier and have used a 750sb with 790FX board?

NightmareXX, i look forward to your results:D
 
Associate
Joined
12 Nov 2008
Posts
1,220
All we really need to know now, is how the AM3 versions perform on a 880g motherboard and how well the i5 (i think thats what its called) performs so we can start to make some decisions about what is the best overall route to go this year.
 
Associate
Joined
12 Aug 2005
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1,025
Location
Team 10
Sadly the RAM I've ordered isn't in stock so I'll either have to change it or wait for it to come in. Either way, Monday at the earliest :( It'll be my first time overclocking too! :D
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2008
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11,648
Location
London
CPUs like Q8x00 and Q9x00 would finally have a place in the market.

Except that the C2Qs are overpriced, especially the Q6600 and Q9450.
The Q9xxx is almost 1 year old now, and yet have had no price decrease it all (infact, have possible gone up in price) (and I'm talking about current price in UK vs launch price in $ here - if we compare current UK price to current USD price there are markups of up to £70 in play).

The Q6600 is also higher than one would expect for a 65nm chip, infact a lot of the 65nm C2Ds are higher than one would expect as well (especially for some of the used parts).
 
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Associate
Joined
23 May 2008
Posts
420
Except that the C2Qs are overpriced, especially the Q6600 and Q9450.
The Q9xxx is almost 1 year old now, and yet have had no price decrease it all (infact, have possible gone up in price) (and I'm talking about current price in UK vs launch price in $ here - if we compare current UK price to current USD price there are markups of up to £70 in play).

The Q6600 is also higher than one would expect for a 65nm chip, infact a lot of the 65nm C2Ds are higher than one would expect as well (especially for some of the used parts).

Hmm I'm sorry, but I don't know the prices for those products in UK..
But here in Canada I can grab a Q6600 for $220, a P2 920 for $320, a P2 940 for $378 or a Q9550 for $390. The prices between Q6600 and 920 are just too far apart, and if I'd ever consider going 940 i'd be too tempted to pick up a Q9550. A Q9300 is $320, Q8200 is $230. These prices are killing me. I wouldn't know what to do if I were out in the market for a CPU.

Sorry to hear the exchange rate there... It seems to be a little bit better here... Just hope Intel have another price decrease across the board =)
 
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Soldato
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
11,862
Location
Hamilton
Well, I'm buying a Phenom II 940. But despite reading at least some of every review up there, I learned very little today.

What I did learn was this - The retail chips clock on much lower voltage than the review chips do. From the reviews themselves? I learned that reviewers are inept and lazy, and bulk up their reviews with pictures and information that we already knew.

So the situation with Intel vs AMD is...

At the Phenom II 920 and 940 bracket AMD is best bang for buck. At any other price bracket below the Phenom I is a bit of a dog, and above AMD have nothing.

OcUK have already discounted the competing C2Q chip, which means that if that discount sticks, Intel just closed the gap on AMD again and AMD don't really have a best bang for buck position over Intel, they just have parity.

What remains to be seen is overclocking results. Discount everything in those reviews for a few reasons.

1) They were not using retail chips, retail chips are already showing to be better.
2) Not one of them used an FX board. FX boards should get more speed out of them.
3) They nearly all used dumb multiplier overclocking.

So when the dust settles I'd expect two things.

1) Intel to match AMD for out of the box price/performance.
2) AMD to be the better overclocker at the price point.

In order to move forwards AMD need to do some work with their AMD Overdrive software to push overclocks high, and they need to come out with higher clocked chips later in the year.

I honestly think reading this post saves reading any of the awful reviews.
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Feb 2007
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3,430
Another problem AMD have is that AM2 has not been a successful socket. This has resulted in a relatively small (compared to Intel 775) user base that would potentially consider upgrade.

The fact that P2 struggles to beat Intel's older (and comparatively priced) Core2 architecture will mean the pain is not over for AMD.
 
Associate
Joined
21 Sep 2008
Posts
1,592
The fact that P2 struggles to beat Intel's older (and comparatively priced) Core2 architecture will mean the pain is not over for AMD.

I dont think that is correct. Clock for clock they seem to be around the same or just lower (prob due to intel software optimization, this can only get better as software updates). Looking at 2-4% diffrence, which is lower then any error margins should be anyways.

Overclocking they seem to be better then Intel's Core2, even with people using multiplier overclocks. Had reports of some chips hitting 3.5 on stock volts for example.

At worst they are on par with Core2, but even thats streatching it.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 May 2004
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5,503
Location
Naked and afraid
More and more people around the web are hitting 3.7-3.9GHz on STOCK volts.

Even this early revision seems well underclocked, I'm quite suprised AMD didn'trelease a 3.2 or 3.3GHz (960) version to be honest? Or perhaps they don't want to oversell/spec the early revision to take any sales away from the AM3 arrival.

Also it's worth noting that people are getting similar results on older SB600 motherboards, so in reality you don't need to fork out for a SB750 if you already have an original 790FX like myself.
 
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