AMD to Reveal Callisto based Phenom II X2 at Computex

This is good news. There's a big gap in AMD's portfolio between the £55 AMD Athlon 64 X2 7850+ 2.80GHz and £100 Phenom II X3 710 2.6GHz CPU's. It would be nice to see the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition appear at around the £80-90 mark with subsequent lower binned models priced down in £5-15 decrements towards the X2 7850+ Black Edition.With the Phenom II X2's in place, Intel will have some pretty stiff competition in the mainstream segments.

I suspect that this is the reason why Intel is releasing the Pentium E6000 series
 
Just to add to this, xbitlabs has got hold of Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 CPU's. They've confirmed that the roadmaps were correct in that the Phenom II X2 is a Deneb with two cores cut, while the Athlon II X2 is an all new core with no L3 cache but with 2 x 1mb L2 Cache.

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-athlon-ii-x2.html

Their brief testing shows the Phenom II X2 550 having a slight edge over the Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8GHz but the L3'less Athlon II trailing behind a bit. The lack of the 3rd and 4th cores allowed them to overclock the aformentioned CPU's to 3.98GHz 1.475V and 3.90GHz 1.500V respectively. I suppose we'll need more information before we can make any form of assumptions but if AMD were to price the Phenom II X2 at around £80 and the Athlon II X2 at around £60, they're onto a winner :)

Will also be interesting to see how the Athlon II X2 compares against the 65nm Phenom based Athlon 64 X2 7000's
 
There's a fair few good DDR3 boards around already. We could do with some more DDR3 790GX's though :)
 
Yeah, these are among the few that are already available to buy :)

Sounds like what Asus has been applying to their motherboards. From what I've heard, having the feature enabled on the Asus BIOS increases overall boot time from power on to windows loading bar. It's a nice feature for people to have, particularly if their Windows install has messed up and in need of assistance, or just want to access something quickly.
 
Sweet, feel this platform need much more reviewing. We seem to jump on the latest i7 (0.05% increase in performance) Intel cpus like they're the next great thing.
 
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the i7 only yields a 0.05% performance increase over other platforms. Gaming is not it's strongest point but wherever it's architecture along with it's Hyperthreading can be utilised it really comes into it's own.

Phenom II's got plenty of coverage since January if you look in the right places. The main problem lies with a lot of users who have been so blinded by Intel being the top performer for nearly two and a half years that they didn't even notice that Phenom II was starting to bring home some wins!

About a year ago, I wrote an AMD vs Intel article with equivalent CPU's at different clockspeeds. I intend to do another this summer with a wider range of CPU's including Phenom II. My own experience with AM2+ is that it's a very capable platform that actually has a future unlike LGA775. If you're an overclocking enthusiast, it really is the answer to your prayers as the tweaking options are much wider and the performance increases as a result are very rewarding. It was a breath of fresh air moving away from the dull days of whacking up the FSB till it can't take anymore. :)
 
name='Mul.' said:
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the i7 only yields a 0.05% performance increase over other platforms. Gaming is not it's strongest point but wherever it's architecture along with it's Hyperthreading can be utilised it really comes into it's own.

To what extent ? I mean in any benchmarkers I've seen, gaming and non-gaming, there isn't anything that I can't compete with, or even beat to the extent of a measily 0.05 % (or so) - as a figure to throw out vS the outlay.

name='Mul.' said:
Phenom II's got plenty of coverage since January if you look in the right places. The main problem lies with a lot of users who have been so blinded by Intel being the top performer for nearly two and a half years that they didn't even notice that Phenom II was starting to bring home some wins!

That's pretty much a contradiction in terms. Getting plenty of coverage, but u gotta find it.
 
What I mean is that a lot of reviewers carry out the tests and reviews but the news of what Phenom II was capable of didn't always spread too well. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant :)

As for i7

3D Modeling

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333773,00.asp

Photoshop CS4

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333775,00.asp

Video Encoding with H.264, WMV9 and MPEG2

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333774,00.asp

Video Encoding

http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/review/2008/11/04/Intel-Core-i7-Performance-Analysis/p3

3D Rendering

http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/review/2008/11/04/Intel-Core-i7-Performance-Analysis/p4

Image Editing and Compression

http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/review/2008/11/04/Intel-Core-i7-Performance-Analysis/p5

Image Editing and x.264 encoding

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/7

...more encoding

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/8

File compression and Encryption

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/9

Just a couple of reviews but based on these, I maintain that performance gains from i7 is far higher than the 0.05% that you say. Do note that these aren't synthetic apps so they represent real world performance. I can understand what you mean in the context of games, but that's because when you're playing most (there's a few selective games that are still stupidly CPU intensive) modern games at respectable resolutions, the main limitation is the Graphics Card and this is why Core i7 isn't necessarily worth it for games. Bottom line is, i7 was something special but only really applies to a specific set of people, and they're general power users. For many, the outlay isn't worth it but if you want the best and only the best, this is it :)

By comparison, AMD Phenom II and Core 2 Duo/Quad represents the value for money part of the market where excellent performance can be had at a good price.

I shan't derail this thread much further. My Apologies
 
That's the thing really. Let's come to terms with the 0.05% being a figurative number thrown out versus cost. The figures from the benches above come out more like 15% with no difference between using 2 or 3 channel memory. Massage in the price.

Being outside of the professional arena here, with the majority in this site being more interested in playing Crysis faster on their 24" and wanting the best they can get with perhaps a massive wedge on occasion. The majority of their seek for the "best" or "special" system their money can buy - let's say for any amount of cash they may have.

U advise an i7 and ur not advising them to buy correctly. U may have to advise them as soon enough 775 won't exist.

But at the end of the day, professionally (if ur wanting the bottom line best-that-money-can-get) u'll be doing many of the applications benched above with ur Cuda based card spanks both the i7 and 775. Professional systems with constraints like working with files over networking and not a drive setup on an internal serial drive.

So ur really back to advising lay-people on what system to buy, with anything up to £10k (to throw out a stupidly, slanting to infinite, alarming figure), if 775 is not going away, u would be crazy not to advise them to get it. U advise i7 cos u have to not for anything that they'll gain.
 
I certainly see where you're coming from and as I say the value for money doesn't quite work out with i7. People buy i7 when they want the best and want a platform that has life in it. The current X58 boards have already been reported to support the refreshed 32nm CPU's with a microcode update for example. I also think that the cost perspective of i7 is exaggerated. Proven boards like the Gigabyte EX58 UD3R can be had for £150 and 6GB Tri Channel memory kits are available for about £20-25 more than a good 4GB DDR2 set. The Core i7 920 can also be had for similar money to the Q9550. Then factor in that most people who are looking at higher end setups want a good P45 based LGA775 board.

Core i7 920 2.66GHz - ~£220

Gigabyte EX58 UD3R - ~£150

6GB DDR3-1600 - £70

Rough Total - £440

Core 2 Quad Q9550 - £200

Gigabye EP45 or whatever P45 board of choice - £100-125

4GB PC2-8500 - £45

Rough Total - £345-370

Percentage extra spent - Up to 28%

Performance Gains? - It depends

So it's not all that outrageous to opt for i7 over a higher end LGA775 set of equipment. I also appreciate what you say about Pro Workstations and CUDA but not everything is graphics card based yet and until it is, the Core i7 see's the bigger gains.

As I say, for gamers, it isn't that straight forward and much of the time, even a high clocked dual core along with a fast graphics card would suffice.

This really has spun out of control and it started from when I picked up on your 0.05% comment but all I wanted to point out was that i7 genuinely does have it's advantages for some, where the additional cost is more than worthwhile.

Returning to the topic at hand, Phenom II / AM3 is where we're going to see all of the interesting stuff on the value for money and gamers side, at least until Core i5 shows up. We have plenty of Socket AM2+ 790GX boards for under £90 and this is where the value is, but as mentioned on the previous page, it'd be nice to see more DDR3 boards. Particularly below £100, as DDR3 doesn't seem to have that much of an effect on this platform :)
 
It's mad from my pov - I'd like to say, when asked - "YES i7, get it, great gains, new tech, 3x memory - kewl!".

But u HAVE to think about it, which is crazy for something new.
 
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