AMD Phenom II Bring Us No Exciting Improvements
As AMD’s exclusive rival on X86 microprocessor, Intel launched Core i7 Series Processor last week in a big way. Core i7 becomes a quad-core processor, but it doesn’t suppress its competitor by numbers, even though it supports Hyper-threading. AMD doesn’t think much about this, but users will do.
Phenom II Processor’s code name is “Deneb”. It will be the first triple-core processor backed by 45nm technology. AMD Phenom II triple-core and quad-core will be named in a new way. Triple-core will come out as Phenom II 700 Series, and quad-core products include Phenom II 800 and 900 Series with 6MB and 8MB of total L2 and L3 cache respectively.
How many improvements do you believe?
Phenom II Series will come to us with 920 and 930 models firstly. The naming scheme is the same as Core i7. Their release date is scheduled to be Jan 18th, but according to latest information, it might be postponed till March 2009. The frequency of Phenom II 920/940 is 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz. They feature AM2+ socket, supporting DDR2-1066, not DDR3. Their TDPs are as high as 125W.
Phenom II 940 will be bundled by black package to become TOP AMD consumer processor instead of Phenom 9950. The performance will be undoubtedly improved because of doubled cache capacity. Inside data from AMD shows that, compared with Intel Core2 Q9300/9400, Phenom II 940 will work much better, but the price will probably surprise the consumers.
Today an Australian website leaks something new about the price. It says Phenom II X4 920 and Phenom II X4 940 will be sold at AUD471.90 (about $302.5) and AUD532.40 (about $341.2). The link has been deleted. If this is true, then the price is quite close to Intel Core i7-920 processor. According to the leaked overclocking result so far, it can be clocked to 4GHz even under high voltage. But if using liquid nitrogen for cooling, the frequency increases to nearly 6GHz. Therefore, this price doesn’t sound so attractive in general.
Just after Phenom II 920/940, AMD will reveal Phenom II 700/900 processor supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 with 95W TDP. Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Biostar and AsRock have announced motherboards supporting Phenom II processor, which have somewhat cleared obstacles for Phenom II processor.
Besides improved L2+L3 cache capacity, slightly upgraded frequency and additional DDR3 support (920/940 only support DDR2), we can say 45nm Phenom II processor hardly bring something new to us. I am afraid that AMD will need to worry about its situation in 2009.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
A bit deceptive. I believe the Lost Planet, Quake and UT3 gaming figures shown are for AMD’s integrated graphics performance and we all know how bad is Intel’s own integrated graphics. The 3DMark CPU score is a good indicator of actual CPU speed.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I was thinking the same here rehsabee. Without any precision on what is the video card used, I tend to believe it’s a comparison between integrated graphics as well.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
the dragen plattform is: 790GX/FX chipset with SB750, 4870 graphics and phenom 2. as of this, its NOT integrated. i even believe they used the same graphics card for the test on the relative systems.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
@chris, just look at the LP and UT3 graphs. The Intel systems hit a GPU wall there. If it were a powerful like graphics HD4870, how could the GPU limit happen? IMO this is a base system with Phenom II and integrated graphics, and no graphics card.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Hard to believe. What PhenomII 940 improvement is just bigger cache size. I expect not much performance improvement from current Phenom.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Any real benchmark? This article is just a guessing nothing else.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I know a friend who works for the website that hosted the pricing of the Phenom II (Austin Computers) for $470, I can confirm it is fake and just to suck in early buyers. The pricing will be around $100 less which makes it very competitive.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Michael,how can I confirm it?
November 27th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Hi, unfortunately the Phenom II is still under NDA, so no official pricing will be leaked as of yet. Another thing you need to take into account is the 10% GST + import taxes that we have over here, which will make it cheaper when buying in the US. I can say though it will be at least $50 less then the $300 price you have converted it to.
Many companies do this over here to promote their website on http://www.staticice.com.au
It sucks in early buyers giving more advertising to their website. The same thing happened not long ago with the GTX280 before it was leaked, a few sites listed it well over $1000 AUD which soon dropped to $750 as soon as it was released.
November 27th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Theo Valich has some early pricing info on his wordpress blog http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/amd-phenom-ii-gets-a-price-less-than-400/
November 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Theo has based that on Austin’s pricing, which is incorrect. Read that more carefully
November 27th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
As for the performance… i really think all these “comments” about Phenom II being slower or quicker are subjective… I mean, we see a graph, without knowing the source, and we make statements saying that this processor will be a flop without even knowing, in fact, how it will perform …
As for the availability … same thing… Do you know how many processors are being produced per day? Well, i don’t … and 99% of the people doesn’t know either… ( consumers )
December 16th, 2008 at 7:55 am
LOl i welcome any AMD Processors..OMG you see what intel wants for for the I7 forget that!!!
Also eveything intel has added is the same thing AMD has been doing for years
Intel just ups the price and cache ..
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
1 mistake u ppl done phenom II Series will come to us with 920 and 930 models its 940 contniuing amd has done some good work after all though it will be hard to say now whoes the winner is though but it looks like amd got some advancement over intel core i7 if the prize tell in these site is true
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
1more thing i forgot dont forgot core i7 has hardware lvl issue which knows as TLB ya there is a fix but NOT @ HARDWARE lvl its a bios solution only and directly drop the performance of 40% of core i7 940 over core 2 quad 9400 to drop like only 30%
January 7th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Prateek, you need to provide some citation or links or any amount of proof, other wise what you say is just Intel bashing.
Any proof. I’d love to see AMD be competitive, but not because of some flaw in Intel’s CPU’s.