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New AMD Phenom II's out (as well as the 7750 Black Edition).

3280 Views 34 Replies 12 Participants Last post by vkristof, Mar 6, 2009

H8nXTC

Discussion Starter · Jan 8, 2009

If anyone is interested, looks like a few places are showing the new Phenom II 920 and 940 in stock as of today. I believe the official release date is tomorrow, the 8th of January.

If you've missed it and a looking a cheap dual core x2, the Phenom based 7750 Black Edition is available from Newegg for $80, mine is on it's way for use in my Gigabyte 790gx board. Looks like the new bios for the Gigabyte 780 PGM board is ready for the new Phenom II's also. Both are AM2+/AM3 ready, I believe.

1 - 20 of 35 Posts

chadamir

· #2 · Jan 8, 2009

It is coming out tomorrow. For the price, it seems better to just spend an extra few hundred and get the core i7 and a new mobo. The price/performance of the new chip doesnt really justify a between-new-systems upgrade to me.

rebkell

· #3 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by H8nXTC /forum/post/15490975

If anyone is interested, looks like a few places are showing the new Phenom II 920 and 940 in stock as of today. I believe the official release date is tomorrow, the 8th of January.

If you've missed it and a looking a cheap dual core x2, the Phenom based 7750 Black Edition is available from Newegg for $80, mine is on it's way for use in my Gigabyte 790gx board. Looks like the new bios for the Gigabyte 780 PGM board is ready for the new Phenom II's also. Both are AM2+/AM3 ready, I believe.

Any links for the Phenom II already in stock? What kind of prices are they starting at?

H8nXTC

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jan 8, 2009

Here's a Canadian site, click on Check Stock. Prices are in Canadian. I expect the 920 to be about $250 US or less. From early indications, it appears these have a large headroom for overclock. With NDA off tomorrow, we should get some more solid info. so you should ignore those that give advise before all the info. is out. I suspect these will compete with Intel at the same price point, especially when the prices settle after the initial release. Plus if you've got a AM2+ board, you won't need to upgrade your board also like you will with Intel. But we'll have to wait and see...
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...anufacture=AMD

chadamir

· #5 · Jan 8, 2009

People have posted benchmarks and the core i7 overclocks well too. I'm not saying don't buy it, I'm just saying that the $280 price point seems a bit steep.

renethx

· #6 · Jan 8, 2009

3

The Tech Report

Basically Deneb is equal to Yorkfield (as far as encoding is concerned). Anyway AMD is finally able to compete with Intel in quad-core.

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rebkell

· #7 · Jan 8, 2009

Don't know anything about the place, but mwave has them listed as in stock:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec_...iteria=BA25827

tgggd86

· #8 · Jan 8, 2009

The phenom II 920 has a lower thermal rating which should give it more headroom for overclocking. Plus the intel Turboboost will make a full core overclock more difficult.

As for as paying "only" 30 bucks more for the core i7 maybe you should look at the price of the motherboard you'll need.... $300 for a decent core i7 board compared to a pretty goot AM2+ or AM3 board for $100

Thats whats made AMD SO much better on the price point, intel looks cheaper but they have VERY few $100 motherboards while AMD has very few $200 motherboards.

You can't run a processor without a mobo, which is what will always make AMD a better deal.

renethx

· #9 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by tgggd86 /forum/post/15493255

The phenom II 920 has a lower thermal rating which should give it more headroom for overclocking. Plus the intel Turboboost will make a full core overclock more difficult.

As for as paying "only" 30 bucks more for the core i7 maybe you should look at the price of the motherboard you'll need.... $300 for a decent core i7 board compared to a pretty goot AM2+ or AM3 board for $100

Thats whats made AMD SO much better on the price point, intel looks cheaper but they have VERY few $100 motherboards while AMD has very few $200 motherboards.

You can't run a processor without a mobo, which is what will always make AMD a better deal.

Core i7 is not the correct Intel processor to compare with Phenom II. Simply Phenom II can't compete with Core i7 in both performance and the price of the total system.

It is Core 2 Quad Q9300/Q9400 that should be compared with Phenom II 920/940. Anand's article :

Quote:
Here's how it breaks down. The Phenom II X4 940 is usually the same speed or faster than Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9400, and priced similarly at $275. There are some areas where the Q9400 will be faster than the Phenom II X4 940, so if you happen to use an application that runs better on Intel hardware then you've got your choice made out for you. But for the most part, if you're buying a quad-core processor at around $275 today, Phenom II will tempt you.

Then AMD is as good as, but is hardly "much" better than, Intel. The price of a typical system:

- Phenom II 940: $275

- MB: GA-MA790GX-DS4H: $127

- DDR2-800 2x2GB: $44

- Total: $446

- Core 2 Quad Q9400: $266

- MB: GA-EP45-UD3P: $137

- DDR2-800 2x2GB: $44

- Total: $447

- Core i7 920: $284

- MB: MSI X58 Platinum: $215

- DDR3-1333 3x2GB: $145

- Total: $644

Core i7 920 is 1.5 times faster than Phenom II 940/Core 2 Quad Q9400 in x264 encoding. You get what you paid for.

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Taubs

· #10 · Jan 8, 2009

What kind of performance boost will we see when ddr3 boards come out?

vkristof

· #11 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by tgggd86 /forum/post/15493255

The phenom II 920 has a lower thermal rating which should give it more headroom for overclocking. Plus the intel Turboboost will make a full core overclock more difficult.

As for as paying "only" 30 bucks more for the core i7 maybe you should look at the price of the motherboard you'll need.... $300 for a decent core i7 board compared to a pretty goot AM2+ or AM3 board for $100

Thats whats made AMD SO much better on the price point, intel looks cheaper but they have VERY few $100 motherboards while AMD has very few $200 motherboards.

...

The Phenom II is potentially a good comeback for AMD.

However, I'm a bottom feeder so I'm personally more interested in the rumored price wars in the ~$100 (or less) CPU space. I have two fairly recent AM2+ IGP MBs and I'd be more than happy to upgrade one of them to a Phenom X3 2.3 GHz + they drop into the $70-80 range.

Competition is good.

renethx

· #12 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by Taubs /forum/post/15494125

What kind of performance boost will we see when ddr3 boards come out?

Maybe zero to a few percent performance increase here and there in benchmarks?

H8nXTC

Discussion Starter · #13 · Jan 8, 2009

Phenom II 920 at Newegg.com for $235.00

No mention yet about people getting engineering samples to OC to 4GHz on air.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&Tpk=AMD%20920

vkristof

· #14 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/15495591

Maybe zero to a few percent performance increase here and there in benchmarks?

It might save a few watts of system power because of the lower operating voltage and more recent process technology for the DDR3 DRAMs.

Still, these speed Phenom IIs seems like vast overkill for HTPCs.

mcnabney

· #15 · Jan 8, 2009

What hasn't been mentioned yet is that the Phenom2 will drop right into those existing AM2/AM2+ slots, so people looking for a little more power have a relatively cheap upgrade.

Also, the I7s really aren't HTPC-type processors due too their considerable power requirements (both CPU and board double as space heaters). Just as the top Phenom1s were dismissed due to their heat, so should I7s in living room settings.

rebkell

· #16 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by mcnabney /forum/post/15496194

What hasn't been mentioned yet is that the Phenom2 will drop right into those existing AM2/AM2+ slots, so people looking for a little more power have a relatively cheap upgrade.

Also, the I7s really aren't HTPC-type processors due too their considerable power requirements (both CPU and board double as space heaters). Just as the top Phenom1s were dismissed due to their heat, so should I7s in living room settings.

That's the part I like, I have a system now running with an X2-6000 and I think I can drop one of these right in and practically double my speed, for encoding my videos, which is just what I've been looking for.

renethx

· #17 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by mcnabney /forum/post/15496194

Also, the I7s really aren't HTPC-type processors due too their considerable power requirements (both CPU and board double as space heaters). Just as the top Phenom1s were dismissed due to their heat, so should I7s in living room settings.

Sorry, I don't see much difference between Phenom II 940 and Core i7 920 in power consumption.

bit-tech.net

	idle	load
Phenom II 940	98W	187W
Core 2 Quad Q9450	107W	175W
Core i7 920	103W	196W

	idle	load
Phenom II 940	142W	230W
Core 2 Quad Q9400	138W	192W
Core i7 920	150W	244W

There were published over twenty reviews on Phenom II today and you can see similar results there (perhaps; I didn't check all of them

). Read also The Tech Report . The total amount of energy used to render the scene in Cinebench:

- Phenom II 940: 17650 Joule

- Core 2 Quad Q9400: 16129 Joule

- Core i7 920: 14755 Joule

So Phenom II 940 is the most inefficient processor among the three.

Anyway I don't recommend these processors for a pure HTPC. They are surely good for an encoding/video editing machine.

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chadamir

· #18 · Jan 8, 2009

The core i7 920 can get to 4.0 ghz on air.

renethx

· #19 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by vkristof /forum/post/15495989

It might save a few watts of system power because of the lower operating voltage and more recent process technology for the DDR3 DRAMs.

Look at these charts at bit-tech.net.

Power consumption at idle

	DDR2	DDR3
Q9450	107W	113W
E8500	107W	113W

Practically the lower voltage of DDR3 is nullified by a higher frequency.

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vkristof

· #20 · Jan 8, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/15496745

Look at these charts at bit-tech.net.

Power consumption at idle

DDR2 DDR3
Q9450 107W 113W
E8500 107W 113W

Practically the lower voltage of DDR3 is nullified by a higher frequency.

Yeah, that's the problem: one variable changes for the "better" and a different variable changes for the "worse".

Plus I have NO idea what power supply rail the motherboards derive the 1.5V from either.

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