Feature Articles

AMD's New Phenom II X6 1100T - Have Six for Christmas

By Vincent Chang - 13 Dec 2010

Conclusion

Conclusion

For the first half 2011, AMD will probably be focusing on its upcoming Fusion branded platforms. These processors with integrated graphics won't get the hardcore enthusiasts too excited, but it's an opportunity for AMD to expand its almost non-existent market share in ultra-portables and netbooks. That means the current Phenom II architecture will be mostly unchanged. No doubt, AMD will continue to tweak and release new, incremental models, but besides more energy efficiency improvements, there doesn't seem to be much AMD can do to break Intel's performance upper hand.

Hence, the September and now the December round of processor releases from AMD. These are minor upgrades and then even further minor upgrades to that. What consumers get is slightly better performance at around the same price or with a small price bump. Considering that AMD's top processors are now under US$300, it's a relatively narrow range for them to maneuver, so there are some overlaps in pricing, especially moving from a quad-core to a 6-core variants.

Back to the AMD processors under review here, the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition goes for US$265, making it the most costly desktop processor from AMD. It's however less than the US$280 that Intel is asking for its Core i7-870. Clock for clock, Intel is the faster processor. Where AMD stands out is when the applications make use of its greater number of cores. Cinebench and Handbrake, and other video encoding tools should benefit from the 1100T. We also saw some of that advantage in Far Cry 2, but many games will favor the Core i7-870. Hence, at the very least, the Phenom II X6 1100T is decent value against the Intel in the right circumstances.

Throw in the improved energy efficiency in the 1100T against the older 1090T and the US$36 premium of the 1100T against its AMD rival becomes more palatable.

The other 6-core, the Phenom II X6 1075T gets the same lower power consumption as the 1100T and at US$200, it goes head to head against Intel's mainstream quad-core, the Core i5-760. While the Intel processor remains unbeatable for power draw and has the edge in SYSmark, the Phenom II X6 1075T does pretty well in the gaming benchmarks against the 760 and obviously the 1075T wins for the multi-threaded apps. All-in-all, it's a very competitive situation for AMD.

If you can't make the US$200 price bracket for the 1075T, the top AMD quad-core, the US$186 Phenom II X4 970 is an option. It comes with similarly lowered power consumption compared to its 965 predecessor, along with a small performance gain. Again, Intel's main contender in its price bracket is the Core i5-760. In this match-up between quad-cores, the 970 is also pretty competitive, beating the Intel in rendering performance benchmarks like Cinebench. It's more or less equal to the 760 in other benchmarks like SYSmark, though if all you want is lower power consumption, Intel is the choice.

We finally move to the entry level quad-cores from AMD, where the Athlon II X4 645 is a 100MHz jump over the 635. Against Intel's dual-core Core i3 in this price segment, they actually don't fare too well in lightly threaded apps, thanks to Intel's architecture. They do get the boost in multi-threaded apps but for uses like gaming, we have to give it to the Intel competitors. More so when the AMD at US$118 is only slightly less than the US$125 Core i3-550. Unless you really need a cheap quad-core for video encoding, we'll recommend Intel for a more balanced system. There is still the motherboard price consideration, for which AMD boards have historically cost less and it's still the case. So while the overall motherboard and CPU price point could be slightly better for AMD, we're reviewing the processor's competency in this article.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
AMD Phenom II X4 970
AMD Athlon II X4 645

 

 

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