AMD Phenom II X4 940 and 920 CPUs

I haven't yet read the introduction to the review, but what are they doing calling their processors the same as Intels?!?!
We now have two different "920" processors.

edit: got to page 7: Far Cry 2, and you have a quad core Athlon x2 at the bottom.
edit2: in fact, looking at that graph is rather interesting, with Far Cry 2 still not liking the i7s and the Phenom IIs doing rather well.
edit3: now finished reading and well done AMD, you finally have something worth buying which isn't a niche. Excellent.

I just upgraded my X2 5000 BE to the 940. It's sitting beside my Q6600 system. Feels as good as the Q6600 for responsiveness, gaming etc. Both are overclocked to 3.6ghz on air. If you've already got and AM2 board it's a great upgrade. Just my 2 cents.

Originally Posted by Cupboard
I haven't yet read the introduction to the review, but what are they doing calling their processors the same as Intels?!?!
We now have two different "920" processors.

edit: got to page 7: Far Cry 2, and you have a quad core Athlon x2 at the bottom.
edit2: in fact, looking at that graph is rather interesting, with Far Cry 2 still not liking the i7s and the Phenom IIs doing rather well.
edit3: now finished reading and well done AMD, you finally have something worth buying which isn't a niche. Excellent.

Fixed the 7750 - typo'd.

Intel claims our Far Cry 2 numbers are low, but I've tested numerous i7 boards now with plenty of different CPUs, BIOS', and memory combinations and it's pretty consistent we found - the engine just doesn't agree with them.

Originally Posted by Anakha
Perhaps I'm missing something. I thought this was a review of the 920 and 940. So why in the charts do we have listed:

AMD Phenom II X4 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)

What's the first one? I must have missed something, right? 'Cause for Memory bandwidth tests and the like, that one comes in very nicely, though not nearly as well as the 940 and 920 in other benches...

This one is a clock for clock matching of the original Phenom 9950 BE so you can see the exact differences between generations without the MHz difference.

The 9950 had a 2.0GHz northbridge clock and 2.6GHz core clock, so we matched it for the Phenom II X4. As you could see from the graphs - core clock > memory clock for overall performance.

The Phenom II 940 is priced at about £230 and is roughly the equivalent in performance to Intel's 9550, which is priced at about £242. So the 940 is slightly cheaper to a similarly speced Intel CPU (about 5% cheaper). The higher speced Intel CPU's are too expensive for most people, so don't be attracted by the performance of an £850 + VAT CPU. You only need rocket ships to go into orbit!

At the price difference or 5% the telling factor is probably going to be the motherboard!!!
You should think about the boards performance, abilities, upgradeability and 2bpc efficiency.

If I had a 2500 phenom I would consider the 940, but I would probably wait for the AMD 3 CPU's to be released. I expect they will come out very soon, but I also expect their performance may not be so special. There may be more emphasis on cheep versions to begin with - lets face it DDR3 is still too expensive as are DDR3 boards, so your really stuck with AMD2+ boards. If you need a new system then I would wait a month or so, and go for the DDR3 board based systems with a new AMD3 phenom.

For most people, if you want to improve upon any quad core system, the biggest performance gain will come from better hard disk drives if upgrading, so you should probably start to think about raid zero.

It does not matter if you are loading the operating system, a program or doing maintenance (defragmenting, scanning for errors or backing up), your weakest link is the hard drive.

That's where I think it's is at !

Originally Posted by djDEATH
i remember seeing somewhere a 790FX board with the SB750 southbridge from the 790GX. Can anyone link me to that article or tell me which mobo it is.

Given the improvements in the SB750, i would certainly want that paired with one of these.

Yes, you can buy 790FX's with SB750s now - we reviewed a (bad) Foxconn board last year and nearly did the Asus M3A79-T until I killed it in December :(

Originally Posted by KevG
If I had a 2500 phenom I would consider the 940, but I would probably wait for the AMD 3 CPU's to be released. I expect they will come out very soon, but I also expect their performance may not be so special. There may be more emphasis on cheep versions to begin with - lets face it DDR3 is still too expensive as are DDR3 boards, so your really stuck with AMD2+ boards. If you need a new system then I would wait a month or so, and go for the DDR3 board based systems with a new AMD3 phenom.

AM3 CPUs will be backward compatible with AM2+ sockets and will accept DDR2, but these AM2+ CPUs will not work in AM3 boards. The AM2+ CPUs do work in older AM2 boards though..

Good Point Bindibadgi - dont think the 940 or 920 will fit into an AMD3 system.
I also meant a 9500, but I agree, that's why I would wait for the AM3 CPU version of the Phenom II (and hopefully slightly cheaper boards and DDR3) - unless I really needed a new system right now, or to upgrade an AM2+ system (perhaps a 3X or possibly a 9500), then I would consider the 940. The 920 is sort of sitting on the fence. Perhaps if you wanted a new system, but probably not!

Thanks,

any chance bindi your going to try and get your hands on a few different SB 750 boards from different manufacturers etc and test how the Phenom II handles on them etc to show which would be the better board for the phenom II?

or any chance you would give it a test on SB 700/SB600 boards to see what kinda diferences that causes, some kind of comprehensive OC article?

Originally Posted by Gremlin
any chance bindi your going to try and get your hands on a few different SB 750 boards from different manufacturers etc and test how the Phenom II handles on them etc to show which would be the better board for the phenom II?

or any chance you would give it a test on SB 700/SB600 boards to see what kinda diferences that causes, some kind of comprehensive OC article?

Like I said I was going to do the Asus M3A79-T already but we killed it :( although I do have a rather nice DFI 790FX/SB750...

I'll look at doing an OC article when AM3s arrive I think - we're really really really busy this month and I dont even have time to do an "OC-Value" article like I did before. :(

That DFI is a great board and from what I've heard the ASUS M3A79-T is only marginally ahead in OCing performance (for £30 more).

i think intel should be worried about these new CPU's,

AMD has risen like a phoneix in many ways, there GPU's have stormed the market, and there CPU's now offer good compention.

A phenom II X4 940 with there 790FX chipset and a 4870X2, now thats some decent gaming there! Which should have decent driver support.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gremlin
any chance bindi your going to try and get your hands on a few different SB 750 boards from different manufacturers etc and test how the Phenom II handles on them etc to show which would be the better board for the phenom II?

or any chance you would give it a test on SB 700/SB600 boards to see what kinda diferences that causes, some kind of comprehensive OC article?

Like I said I was going to do the Asus M3A79-T already but we killed it :( although I do have a rather nice DFI 790FX/SB750...

I'll look at doing an OC article when AM3s arrive I think - we're really really really busy this month and I dont even have time to do an "OC-Value" article like I did before. :(

heh i remember you telling me about that when i asked about Phenom II on another article, and then tim commentingabout your swearing and the smell of burnt silicon going well with morning cofffee

and yeah with all the new tech i can understand just how busy it would be so i cant blame you, but it'd be awesome seeing an OC article about it all sometime :)

Originally Posted by Gremlin
and yeah with all the new tech i can understand just how busy it would be so i cant blame you, but it'd be awesome seeing an OC article about it all sometime :)

Well I want to do it when I have time to understand the overclocking more. I had quite a lot of play with Intel's Core i7, but I want to wait for a few more Phenom II BIOS' to come out and read up on the right ACC settings first (and find a bigger heatsink).

Is the 940 going to be making it into the premium, what pc parts to buy feb edition? Or is it to early to tell (pre OCing results)?

Originally Posted by Mr Mario
Is the 940 going to be making it into the premium, what pc parts to buy feb edition? Or is it to early to tell (pre OCing results)?

We'll discuss it in the office closer to the end of the month.

i got an old socket 939 AMD 64 - 3200 (2.0ghz) . will i see lot of performance increase in games if i upgrade to Phenom 2 - 920 ? i have ATI 4670 vga.

Originally Posted by dpdpdp
i got an old socket 939 AMD 64 - 3200 (2.0ghz) . will i see lot of performance increase in games if i upgrade to Phenom 2 - 920 ? i have ATI 4670 vga.

Yes. Massive. But you cant plug an AM2+ CPU into a 939 board, they are incompatible ;) (just in case you didnt know!).

Especially when you include overclocking and 4GB of 1066MHz DDR2.

The 4670 will then be your bottleneck.

Wow! Phenom II 920 down to £172 at Pixmania. Thats very aggressive pricing!