AMD Phenom II: Competition is Back!

When AMD first launched the Phenom line of processors a couple of years ago,

it couldn't manage to gain too much attention. It was re-launched the following

year in 2008 with a slightly better reception, but not enough to make people

switch from Intel. Now, Phenom II is the latest addition in the family and an

updated brand name for AMD's 45nm multicore central processing units.

Previous desktop class processors from AMD were manufactured on a 65nm

process while Intel was out with their 45nm ones. But this time, alongside a new

CPU with smaller transistor elements, this release introduces some brand-new

technology. With it's launch, the new processor also gives birth to a new

platform which is gaining attention rapidly in the world of enthusiasts for its

overclocking capabilities.

The new platform is called the Dragon and it consists of the Phenom II and

the latest Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards. We got the X4 940 Processor for

review. Let's now have a look at some of the features that these new AMD engines

boast of.

Higher clock rates



As the die shrinks, the voltage needed to drive Phenom II is down significantly.
The new smaller size in combination with an improved micro-architecture gave AMD

a chance to increase the clock rates. Whereas the first-generation Phenoms

topped out at 2.6 GHz, the latest Phenom IIs starts at 2.8 and goes as high as

up to 3.0 GHz.

6 MB of L3 cache



It just wasn't an option for AMD simply to arm the first-generation Phenom with
a larger L3 cache. The power requirements of those 65 nm transistors would have

undoubtedly boosted consumption past the 140 W mark. But current draw was

sufficiently reduced in switching to 45 nm technology to enable AMD to augment

the L3 cache size from 2 MB to 6 MB. In any case, the separate 512 KB caches

provided for each individual core did not change with this redesign, nor did the

64 KB L1 instruction and data cache areas.

Cold bug removed



The 'Cold Bug' as it is known is a physical phenomenon which causes the
processors to cease functioning below a certain temperature. As weird as it may

sound, the problem is serious for extreme overclockers. The bug prevents the use

of extreme cooling methods such as Liquid Nitrogen or Dry Ice. With the

elimination of the bug, the CPUs are expected to give overclocking a whole new

definition.

Compatible and cost efficient



AMD has always taken great pains to stress their backward compatibility as a
selling point. For a consumer, upgrading the processor should not always mean

buying a new motherboard and RAM. Now true to it's promises, AMDs new line of

processors are compatible with earlier AM2 as well as the AM2+ sockets.

Motherboard vendors have already published compatibility lists, and using them

to provide information about which of their motherboards will work with the

Phenom II,

Power management: A better Cool'n'Quiet



Due to performance drops when Cool'n'Quite was enabled, the feature was not used
much often. The new Phenom ll introduces a better Cool'n'Quiet. If one specific

core needs to work on full frequency, CPU doesn't allow independent change of

frequency of other cores. Then all 4 cores are operating at full speed

(frequency). With Cool'n'Quiet enabled performance drop is minimal and is much

lower than on a 65nm Phenom.

The benefit



Though the Intel Core i7 965 is the fastest processor available in the market,
it is also insanely expensive. The Phenom ll has been competitively priced near

the Intel's Core 2 Quad range of processors but has a better performance. Though

the price of the Phenom ll X4 940 and the cheapest of the Core i7 family have a

similar price, the Phenom has an advantage. Core i7 can only work with a new

motherboard, one which has the X58 chipset. Plus it only supports the triple

channel DDR3 memory which is still quite expensive as compared to the affordable

DDR2 which the Phenom lls use.The Phenom ll 940 enjoys a performance level in

between the Core 2 Quad and the Core i7 at an affordable price. At least till

the time Intel cuts prices and DDR3 memory is cheaper.

How we tested?



We compared the processor against the Core 2 Quad 6700, the Core i7 920 and Core
i7 965. The test bed used for running the X4 940 was similar to the other two

processors. We used a J&W 790GX Extreme Motherboard coupled with 4GBs of DDR2

RAM and a Hitachi 500GB HDD. First we tested the processor capabilities with the

on board graphics from ATI{ATI 3300}, and then with an entry level dedicated

graphics card (Nvidia Geforce 9600GTX). PC Mark 05, Cinebench R10 and POV Ray

were the benchmarks used and they were run on Windows XP 32 bit.

Performance results



It had been awhile since we saw a promising product from AMD in the processor
arena. But after testing the X4 940 that no more holds true, at least for some

time. The performance on all the benchmarks was better than the Core 2 Quad

processor that we compared it with. Though Core i7 is better in terms of

performance, but looking at the costs of X58 motherboards and DDR3 RAM building

a system based on it is an expensive deal. What caught our attention was the new

processors extremely low power consumption.

Conclusion



When compared to AMD's first quad core processor, the Phenom 2 is a great leap
forward. The successor to the Phenom lines of processors offers great

improvements, especially in its power consumption which is better than both Core

2 Quad and the Core i7.

Bottomline: Priced competitively, the Phenom ll is a

great option with performance in between the Core 2 Quads and the Core i7.