AMD Launches Fastest Phenom Yet, Phenom II X4 980

MojoKid writes "Although much of the buzz lately has revolved around AMD's upcoming Llano and Bulldozer-based APUs, AMD isn't done pushing the envelope with their existing processor designs. Over the last few months AMD has continued to ramp up frequencies on their current bread-and-butter Phenom II processor line-up to the point where they're now flirting with the 4GHz mark. The Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition marks the release of AMD's highest clocked processor yet. The new quad-core Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition's default clock on all four of its cores is 3.7GHz. Like previous Deneb-based Phenom II processors, the X4 980 BE sports a total of 512K of L1 cache with 2MB of L2 cache, and 6MB of shared L3 cache. Performance-wise, for under $200, the processor holds up pretty well versus others in its class and it's an easy upgrade for AM2+ and AM3 socket systems."

Comments

Wait for Bulldozer

[rwade]

I'll be waiting for the dust to clear with Bulldozer before I make a commitment for my next build. No reason to buy a $200 Phenom II X4 980 now when there is no application that needs that much power. If you buy a Sandy Bridge or a higher-end AM3 board/processor now, your average gamer or office worker won't be able to max it out for years -- unless he does video editing or extensive photo shop or if he has to get his DVD rips down to a 10 minute rip vs a 15 minute rip per feature film...

Might as well wait for the dust to clear or for prices to fall.

Re:Wait for Bulldozer

[ShakaUVM]

>>I'll be waiting for the dust to clear with Bulldozer before I make a commitment for my next build.

I agree. The Phenom II line is just grossly underpowered compared to Sandy Bridge:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=362

The i5 2500K is in the same price range, but is substantially faster. Bulldozer ought to even out the field a bit, but then Intel will strike back with their shark-fin Boba FETs or whatever (I didn't pay much attention to the earlier article on 3D transistors.)

And then on the high-ish end, AMD has nothing to compete against the i7 2600K. And it's not really that much more expensive (+$100) for the 15% extra gain in performance. It's not like their traditional $1000 high end offerings.

Re:Wait for Bulldozer

[swb]

My sense is that people who actually *use* a computer also install dozens of applications and end up with complicated and highly tailored system configurations that are time consuming to get right and time consuming to recreate on a new system.

The effort to switch to a new system tends to outweigh the performance improvement and nobody does it until the performance improvement makes it really worthwhile (say, Q6600 to a new i5 or i7).

I've found that because I end up maintaining a system for a longer period, it pays to buy power today for applications very likely to need or use it in the lifetime of the machine. Avoid premature obsolescence.

Re:Wait for Bulldozer

[gregrah]

Those power consumption benchmarks look a little suspect to me. I've got a Phenom II 720 (3 cores @ 2.8 GHZ) with 95 watt TDP, and the total system consumption at idle is about 65 watts. I'm not sure how they are managing to pull down almost double that with an Athlon II (also a 95 watt CPU) in the test system they used - unless a) they turned off the power management settings in the BIOS, or b) they are using some ridiculous 1000W PSU that is totally inefficient at lower loads.

Anyway - assuming that I leave my machine running for 8 hours a day on average, and the overwhelming majority of the time the CPU is at near-idle loads (i.e. consuming 65W), with electricity costing about $0.12 per kWh, I figure that it probably costs me about $24 per year in electricity. If I could shave off 1/3 of the electricity cost, I would only be saving $8 a year. After the 3 years that it takes me to make up that $25 difference, I'm probably in need of a new CPU anyway.

Also - while I haven't spent much time pricing motherboards recently - when I last checked I found that AMD motherboards tend to be cheaper than Intel motherboards, and also that AMD integrated graphics were considerably stronger, allowing me to get by without a discrete graphics card. Furthermore, if I wanted to upgrade my CPU now with the latest and greatest I would be able to do so without replacing my motherboard and buying new memory, I would be able to do so - whereas if I bought an LGA 1156 motherboard a year ago it would now be obsolete.

In other words - I agree with you that with Intel you'll have a faster and more power efficient machine, but I'm not so sure that you'll end up saving any money.

Uh...this is 301 posts of Intel fans vs AMD fan

[rwade]

This [arstechnica.com] thread has some interesting information on possible BD performance.

.....

This is 301 posts with back and forth that looks basically to be speculation. Prove me wrong by quoting specific statements of those that have benched the [unreleased] bulldozer. Because otherwise, this link is basically a bunch of AMD fanboys fighting against Intel fanboys. But prove me wrong...

Re:Uh...this is 301 posts of Intel fans vs AMD fan

[Rockoon]

The only legit (that I know of) in-the-wild Bulldozer benchmark is a 1.8 GHz dual chip (2 x 16 = 32 cores) server chip setup using the Phoronix benchmark suite (search results)

It is likely that these sample chips are as much a test of the new 32nm fab as they are a test of the new cpu architecture, and definitely not a test of how quickly they can be clocked.

Re:3700 megahertz?

[DurendalMac]

So clock speed means everything when comparing different CPUs and not their raw performance. Got it.

Furthermore, there is no 10 year old CPU that runs at 3ghz unless you did some absurd overclocking.

Re:3700 megahertz?

[smash]

Don't forget that IPC isn't the be all and end all. If you're stalled due to cache misses, then IPC goes out the Window. Modern CPUs have much more cache and much faster buses to main memory than we had in 2004. That is a large reason as to why they're faster. They also have additional instructions that can do more work per instruction - so comparing IPC from CPUs released today to CPUs released last decade is even more meaningless.

Re:We are no longer chasing the Phantom x86...

[smash]

Alternatively, even though intel has won, he is acknowledging that for 99.9% of people, CPU performance no longer matters as much as it used to.

In general use for example, I see no difference between the core i5 in my work machine, and then Pentium D in my oldest home box.

Gaming? Sure, however even that is becoming more GPU constrained.

Both AMD and intel are on notice. Hence both are putting more focus into GPUs. In terms of CPU, it won't be that long before some random multi-core strongarm variant is more power than any regular user will ever need, and they absolutely kill x86 in terms of performance per watt.

The focus is no longer absolute CPU performance, it is shifting towards price, size, heat and power consumption. Computing is going mobile and finding its way into ever smaller devices. Rather than building one large box, distributed computing is the new wave (the cloud, clustering, etc).

AMD's CPU business might have a tricky path ahead, bu thent so does x86 in general, barring niche markets. If AMD are doomed, then intel's traditional dominance using x86 won't be too far behind them.