AMD's Phenom Unveiled: A Somber Farewell to K8
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2007 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Media Encoding Performance
We'll start with our DivX test; this is the same benchmark we've been running for years, we've simply updated to DivX 6.7. The codec was set to Unconstrained quality, with the quality/performance slider at 5 and enhanced multi-threading enabled. The rest of the codec settings remained at their defaults.
Despite the move to four cores and the improvements to the K8 architecture, the Phenom, even at 2.4GHz, is slower than the Core 2 Quad Q6600. Clock for clock, Intel has a 24% performance advantage here.
AMD did make some progress however, if we look back at some of our older numbers the gap at 3.0GHz between dual-core chips was almost 38%.
The situation gets even more bleak once you take into account that the Phenom 9700 will most likely ship when Intel's Q9450 is also available which extends Intel's lead to over 30%.
AMD has always been much more competitive at encoding using Microsoft's Windows Media Video codec:
Windows Media Encoder performance is virtually identical between the Phenom and Core 2 Quad at the same clock speed. However, once you take price into account, Intel starts to pull ahead; the Q6600 is priced competitively with the Phenom 9600 and manages a 7% performance advantage over the 9600. It's not much, but the Q6600 is also cheaper.
Our final encoding test is an increasingly popular format: x264. We encode the same .avi file from our WME test but this time using the x264 codec and AutoMKV. We didn't encode audio and left all program settings at its defaults, the only thing we changed was we asked that the final file size be 100MB (down from 500MB).
Much like our WME results, clock for clock AMD's Phenom actually equals the performance of the Core 2 Quad. Take price into account and Intel is still the right buy; it's tough to say what will happen when the Phenom 9700 and 9900 eventually launch because they may be competing against Penryn at that time, which in this case would be the Q9450, a more formidable opponent.
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ChronoReverse - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Yeah, I was in a similar position a couple months back too but I could tell from the winds that the Phenom wasn't going to be that much better than the Core2 if at all so I sprung for the Q6600. Looks like (unfortunately) my estimation was quite correct =/stmok - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
...And I guess it looks like the wait wasn't worth it.This article confirms to me I should be leaning towards the Intel C2Q Q9450.
rhatsaruck - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
On page 4 titled "Socket-AM2+, Not So Positive?" Anand writes:Currently, the L3 cache/NB on these chips runs at a fixed frequency that's actually lower than the rest of the CPU frequency: 2.0GHz. We tested Phenoms running from 2.2GHz all the way up to 2.6GHz, and in all cases the L3 cache and North Bridge ran at 2.0GHz.
What's the performance impact of this limitation? I don't know how to quantify it. It seems like it might have a material effect on performance. Perhaps Anand can re-run his benchmarks at 1.8 and 2.0 GHz to get a sense of the performance boost when this limitation doesn't exist. From this we might be able to determine how much this shortcoming effects performance at speeds greater than 2.0 GHz.
Iketh - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
My Athlon 4200+ (2.2ghz) overclocks to 2.7ghz stable. Anything passed that and the second core skyrockets too high in temp and fails prime95 torture tests, while the first core has yet to fail ANY tests and runs up to 10 degrees C cooler.My point is the individual core overclocking is the only positive I see out of phenom. If i had this ability in my current athlon 4200+, it'd be clocked at 2.7 and 3.2+ easily.
Omega215D - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Ahh the old 9700 makes a comeback but too bad it falls a bit below expectations compared to the 9700 GPU by ATI who is now AMD.Maybe there's still time to make some tweaks to the processor?
GlassHouse69 - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
well.too bad for amd. they are toast it seems.
if it managed to be as cool and quiet, then I would have gone there on a quad because of price plus they have better and more consistently cheap + featured motherboards.
sux.
Well, on that thought, the new 790x motherboards with this actually might be low power when its all set up and done. fx or x I think does relatively the same thing. isnt the chipset supposed to be incredibly low wattage?
johnsonx - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Everyone knows AMD processors have always been, and will always be, far superior to the crap from Intel. Any article suggesting otherwise is clear evidence of pro-Intel bias, that indeed you all get weekly checks from Intel for the favorable press. The reality is that most Intel processors really don't even work at all; all the supposed PC's sold with Intel processors secretly use AMD processors instead, but again Intel pays off the companies to say they're Intel Inside. Intel has an endless supply of money because of their unfair business practices and the Magic Money Fairy.JumpingJack - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
This is outright kiddin' no one can be that stupid.Bonesdad - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
is that you, Cramitpal???ESD4300 - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Lol. What a fucking clueless, moronic fanboy