Another disaster for AMD: Phenom X4 slower than 65 nm Intel quads

D A A M I T , i am afraid to believe this, if this is true then Intel make us pay 1xxx buck without mercy

What stepping was that ?? Oh ... an ES.

Right.

So we expect some improvement on the retail chip then ??

I still believe Phenom X4 could provide better C/P value.

I will give you that something seems amiss.
I doubt the source tried to fake the numbers, but the range of testing was insufficient, and something seemed to be limiting the CPUs due to nearly identical numbers from the Intel CPUs which those CPUs show a broader range by other benchmarkings. I would not be surprised if the AMD chip's performance was not properly measured either.

I would really love to see AMD beat the Penryn Clock for Clock and have lower thermals which I think it may based on some of the Barcey tests I've seen.

Something is indeed amiss. I am in agreement with zenmaster.

hey guys what happened to that AMD's 3GHz to break 30,000 3DMark06
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inqu [...] 0-3dmark06
i am not sure about that that either but still promising for something

Are you completely unable to grasp benchmarks and analyze them like everyone else in this thread?
The Penryn is losing to the old QX6850 on two runs, basically ties two others, and really only wins one.
Also The Quads are not showing a significant difference to the Duel.
All signs the benchmark has hit a non-CPU bottleneck.
This makes the results unreliable for determining the full potential of the chips.

Add to that the Phenom is in a legacy MB.

I'm really shocked you are the only one who fails to grasp that the Intel Chips may be significantly better than what is shown. Or that possible ALL of the chips are much better than what is shown.

What everyone else in this thread has realized is that the benches do not reveal any real potential.

Well, on the flipside, at least Phenom will be less costly.

AND games are still GPU pigs.

AND you get a proper camlock HSF, no need to reinstall pushpin cheepy BS. Set it and forget it.

Thank god for competition.

Some good points... and some bad points...

Good point, but I'm afraid that RAM divider will continue to haunt AMD in the future. Since the die area is limited, AMD simply didn't have enough space to implement complex RAM logic in the memory controller. In addition to that, AMD would need to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new IMC. In Intel's approach though, since the memory controller is on the chipset, Intel can implement complex logic to accommodate more RAM speed.

I agree that RAM speed will indeed hinder Phenom's performance, but I'm not sure if AMD will do something to rectify that.

Bad point... bad bad point. Contrary to public, and especially your belief, HT3 will not cause a significant performance difference in desktop applications. Phenom is not data hungry, and having a wider (not faster) bus will not help at all; maybe on server, but definitely not on desktop.

Another bad point. So far we've not seen a 3.0Ghz Phenom demonstrated by a 3rd party (ie. Not AMD), and the faster Phenom tested to date is 2.5Ghz. According to VR-Zone, Phenom 2.5Ghz will likely to have a TDP of 125W, and a lot more by 2.7Ghz. Therefore, I'm not sure if 3.0Ghz Phenom will have lower TDP than Penryn at 4.0Ghz.

Thing could change though, as AMD will bin significantly lower leakage part for Phenom 3.0Ghz.

I'm not entirely sure if Crysis is totally GPU bound. Its developer highly recommend the use of quad core over any other hardware component.

http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=639

Again, even though the demo seemed to have minimal effect on multicores, it appears that game is still slightly CPU IPC bound.

Although I agree it is still too early to hand down a verdict in terms of Phenom's performance, bear in mind that Phenom is slated to launch next month. Therefore, we probably won't see significant performance difference between the ES and the finalized version.

As I said, the game seems to be not multi-core optimized... but that doesn't mean its not CPU bounded. It could be clockspeed bounded, or IPC bounded. I'm leaning towards the latter, as there is still performance difference between Phenom and Core 2, despite a slight one.

What I find weird is that Crysis is not multicore optimized. According to its developers, having a quad core will result in a measurable, if not significant boost in performance. I guess we'll know after the real game comes out.

Well, TBH, the final Phenom speed is still up for grabs. Even though the chances don't look good (at all), there's still a possibility that AMD may scale Phenom without too much heat penalty. Given Phenom's near perfect scaling in clockspeed, and if Phenom and Core 2 has similar IPC (not likely though), Phenom should perform head to head, if not better than Core 2 at the same clockspeed.

We'll see though.

Neither the beta or demo has taken advantage of more than two cores.

I agree - Hardly a valid test of CPUs.

Its a Fake !

Hype !

I wouldn't say that the test was a fake or hype. I would agree with Rocky that the test shows anything but that Phenom is a "disaster". Yes it looses, but not by much. At least its close enough to be in the running. This test was extremely limited, as many have pointed out, used an engineering sample of the Phenom, which may or may not bear out the real capabilities of the chip when its finally released, may have had driver or other coding problems as Dragonsrpayer pointed out, and the test itself showed more problems with bottlenecking all the CPUs tested. Thus the test may be real, but very limited in scope.

I'll reserve judgment for when the production Phenom is released. I'm personally holding off my next build until both Penryn and Phenom get out in the wild and benches are available. Then I can make an informed choice, rather than just guess and hope for the best.

Yeap a hurting. LOL Guess Intels $1000 quads are junk also if a $280 dual core can get that close. Can you say only tests 1 core.

That is an opinion, and it it no more or less valid than mine or most anyone else's. I don't think its a disaster, but it is a disappointment. At least the engineering sample shows that AMD is in the running and not left far off in the distance.

One thing I know for sure is that I have made enough money from trading AMD stocks this year so that I can buy a new Phenom and mobo if I want with the profits, so I do like AMD for something, even if its not their present line of CPUs. Of course, I might use the profits to buy something from Intel. I'll wait and see what the benches show next month before deciding that.

Sure! Let's see if faster FSB does benefit Core 2.
http://www.nordichardware.com/Guid [...] ivelse=517
Humm... I guess not.

Now where did Anandtech said "K10 is data hungry, and is hindered by bandwidth"? Please provide a link before putting words into Anand's mouth. Thank you.

They used to have?
http://www.behardware.com/articles [...] o-amd.html

Guess the MEM divider AMD "used to have" also suffer from the same problem. The problem is embedded in AMD's implementation of memory controller, and it is likely they have to partially redesign the controller to fix this problem.

How is this trolling? He found a benchmark he showed it to us

i ain't sure how long you have been around but trust me, i have seen wombat around for a while. He never starts any decent threads, he only posts derogatory threads about AMD and tries to pick fights with baron matrix then claims he is the fanboy.

he is a troll who needs banning, he brings nothing to the forums. Given enough time you will see that you do not need to read his threads to know what they will contain.

no, he is is a long time troll and flamer who should have went ages ago but nothing ever happens and he spreads his filth without punishment.

From Nordic Hardware:

The same applies to Cinebench when we only use one core, but when we use all four cores and these are forced to share the available resources we can see that a higher FSB is preferable.

Do you not remember K7 which had a 100MHz bus but used 333MHz RAM? That's what I meant. It was only a problem when AMD went to DDR2 which needs a 400MHz base speed to run DDR2 800 or 533MHz base speed to run DDR2 1066.


But all that's moot when you consider the difference is 2% and the dual core is right there with quad. They need to use a different game.

Also, how can you say that Phenom won't need more bandwidth than X2 when everything is 2X as wide?

You're right, there. It's funny how the biggest trolls are still around and some of the more objective and knowledgable people were banned...

Yes, AMD definitely needs to get healthy quick. And while this is an enthusiasts forum, the real place that AMD needs to concern itself with profits is in the office environment, where high frame rates in games is not a concern, but the ability to do lots of work at minimal cost is paramount. The enthusiast market is rather small compared to the business market.

Try looking at it in this way, Stranger has about 10 posts for every 1 of Wombat's posts. That says something about longevity and the ability to see what's going on.

A second thing is that Wombat posted and then left, making no further comment about his post. So he seems something like an arsonist, lighting a match and standing back to watch the excitment as everyone else gets involved. That says something about the situation as well.

A thunderstorm has just started here, so I'm shutting down for a while to protect my computer. Good day all.

totally untrue, must i constantly bring this up

amd only had a significant lead in may 2005 (x2 release) through july 2006 (c2d)


all most all testing in 2003-2005 was single task non multitasking - amd performance edge was slight


no i did not bother me since athlons are such poor multitaskers p4's smoke them in the real world

OK i promise not to bring this up,again, for 31 days