| AMD Phenom-II X6-1100T CPU HDE00ZFBRBOX |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Processors | |
| Written by David Ramsey | |
| Tuesday, 07 December 2010 | |
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AMD Phenom-II X6-1100T Black Edition CPU ReviewWhile enthusiasts await AMD's next-generation "Bulldozer"-based desktop CPUs, AMD continues to expand their current desktop CPU line, introducing the Phenom II X6-1100T processor. The 6-core Phenom-II X6-1100T takes over the top spot in AMD's CPU line from the 1090T, and does it at a suggested retail price of only $299. The clock speed improvements over the 1090T are minimal: both the standard and Turbo Core speeds increase only 100MHz, to 3.3GHz and 3.7GHz, respectively. Benchmark Reviews tests the new 1100T against a collection of Intel and AMD processors in gaming and computing performance. Although it's only been a few months since AMD last updated their processor line (bringing us the Phenom-II X6-1075T, among others), AMD has found the time for what's perhaps the last iteration of the Thuban architecture, bringing us the Athlon-II X3-455, the Phenom-II X2-565 Black Edition, and the subject of this review, the Phenom-II X6-1100T Black Edition HDE00ZFBK6DGR CPU. This new 6-core processor takes over the top spot from the X6-1090T Black Edition, increasing the base clock speed from 3.2 to 3.3GHz, and the Turbo Core clock speed from 3.6 to 3.7GHz. These speed tweaks are minor, but at a suggested retail price of only $299, the 1100T might just be one of the best bang-for-the-buck CPU deals today. Although many have forgotten it now, there was a time when AMD processors handily outperformed their Intel equivalents. AMD was the first company to break the "gigaHertz barrier" back in 2000 (Intel's 1GHz Pentium III shipped a few days later). A few years later, I built a system using the then-new dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor for encoding video, and it absolutely stomped my existing dual-processor Pentium III-833 system.
But that was then, and this is now, and AMD has ceded the high end processor market to Intel, while working on their position in the low-to-mid end of the market. This has been a boon for enthusiasts, since desktop processors reached the "fast enough" mark some time ago, and money saved on a CPU can be invested in other parts of the system, often with better overall performance results. Paired with AMD's new 800 series chipsets, which offer extra PCI-E lanes for CrossfireX, SATA 6G and USB 3.0 without needing expensive add-ons like the NVIDIA NF-200, AMD's Thuban processors offer the enthusiast a way to build an affordable, yet very powerful and versatile 6-core production or gaming system. After current manufacturing techniques hit a "megaHertz wall" at about 4GHz a few years ago, both Intel and AMD have concentrated on multi-core CPUs, and it's a rare system these days that's not equipped with at least two cores. As software evolves to take advantage of the performance benefits offered by multiple native threads, we'll see the performance of multi-core systems continue to improve. By driving the cost of 6-core processors downwards, AMD's Phenom-II X6 line keeps the price of these capabilities within reach of the average enthusiast.
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by AMD.
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Comments
It's good to see Big Green as strong as Intel again, or close enough to be called such. It's taken 6 years, but AMD is back. I bought one of the first AMD x64s (4800) back in 2004 and loved it. I gave it to my nephew and it's still going strong.
I doubt any processor maker will ever deliver the knock out blow to its competition that AMD did with the first x64s to Intel. But you never know.
When I needed more power than the old x64 4800 had, I was stuck because Intel still wasn't putting the north-bridge controller on the chip, and I hated that for performance and heat reasons, and in 2008, AMD just didn't have the power I wanted. Then the Core ixx series came out. I couldn't beleive my eyes when I saw the OC potential of those CPU's.
The Core i-series processors are incredible, and even though AMD is the cost per clock ratio winner, if you want the best dollar to performance ratio, it's hard to beat the i7 920 clocked to 3.8Ghz on air.
Also, comparing CPUs for gaming performance is like comparing race cars for seating comfort... FAIL.
What's really funny is that the Core i7 920 is so popular now that it's selling for 25 dollars more than it did two years ago, up from 270 to around 300USD. If I were buying today, I might go with AMD since I do TONS of heavy multitasking, such as having Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, split tab browsers with 20 tabs each open, Eve online, Team Speak, Winamp streaming, video software for my outdoor cams, etc. so the more threads the better.
L2 benchmark, then come back.
I bet my Athlon-II X2-260 can get great FPS on Crysis. Oh, could it depend on GPU?
Being in the market for a CPU and Mainboard right now, I have to say that I'm looking hard at these while holding out to see what value Sandy Bridge brings to the table. I'm glad to be looking at buying parts now, and not a year ago. So much has changed,........
I think that at this point, the fight is between the 1100T, the i7 930, and perhaps the i7 860. I'll be waiting until next year though, to upgrade my current q6600 to either the Fusion or X68 platform.
sometimes i do that.
good review.
i don't give a f**k about biases. these are somehow inebitable in time, i have mines too, but: the most important thing is: NO MONOPOLY!
retards like Toeringsandthong can't understand that.
Am I reading it right that the test for the I7's are using triple channel. How about another test with the I7 running on dual channel.
Overall I like the article.:-)
It's not that I am a fan of Intel over AMD (as if I have to even prove myself, which is ridiculous - but for what it's worth I own a 1075T which, un-overclocked, is just about the best performance per dollar that money can buy for the work loads that I encounter), but I would really appreciate seeing meaningful comparisons rather than meaningless comparisons, regardless of which processor comes out on top.
You want eyeballs on your reviews and hits on your advertisements, then you need to work to have high quality reviews worth visiting. I'm not saying this review was bad, I read all the way through it because it was interesting, but you need to take my point seriously rather than trying to dodge it. Not overclocking the 980X made all of your comparisons against the overclocked 1100T meaningless, and if you think people are going to return to read more reviews if you keep it up, think again.
I didn't write this article, evidenced by the 'written by' credits listed in bold on every page. So when you repeatedly tell me what it is I should be doing, you should be careful not to make claims that I'm dodging your points.
Not sure what you mean about addressing complaints anonymously though; my name is right there. And since there are no other Bryan Ischos on the entire planet, I should be pretty easy to find (as you have noticed).
I don't know how you came to the conclusion you came to for (4). I would expect that anyone willing to overclock would be willing to overclock whatever processor they buy so I don't know why you categorize 1100T overclocking differently than 980X. And, I think the real point that should shine through here is that the 980X was the wrong processor to compare the overclocked 1100T to. You should have compared it to an overclocked i7 that is approximately the same price as the 1100T.
In terms of the amount of time it takes to benchmark these processors, I think that is a good reason to have left the 980X out of it altogether. I think that an overclocked i7 of the same cost as the AMD would have been more interesting in place of the 980X.
And - there are no shortages of reviews putting the 1100T through the standard set of benchmarks. I got here from the amdzone.com front page and the list of reviews just for the 1100T was like 20 long. I picked your site's review to read because I like the site name :) My point being, that you can "challenge" me to find an 1100T review that compared against an overclocked 980X, but challenging me to find a review that is tangibly different than yours doesn't really seem to have made your time in making the review worth it. Meaning, if what you're saying is that you don't do anything different than the other guys, then why are you bothering to repeat what has already been done over and over again? Comparing against an oc'd i7 of the same cost would have been different and interesting.
Forget about oranges to oranges: there are so many random influences on overclocking performance, that it is a risky proposition to compare OC to OC results between competing products. Yeah, you can get results, but no two people are going to get the same results, so the individual data is of little value.
The best you can really do, is to compare the one product under test at stock speeds and overclocked. Then you can see how far the reviewer was able to overclock the one processor they have, with the equipment they have, their OC knowledge and experience, and some measure of their risk tolerance. That's about all you can glean from the single-sample testing that every site performs. If you want to go out and get 100 of each processor and test them in a half dozen environments to get a true statistical understanding of the processor's overclocking potential, the world will laud your efforts and your diligence. Oh wait, that's not right. Someone else will be duty-bound to come onto your site and tell you you did it wrong. Oh, well....
Exceptions are out there, sure. The NVIDIA GTX 460 is a good example; they ALL overclocked like mad. Very consistent results were obtained across the population for that one product, but that's not the norm.
For what it's worth, here are the things that I find I most want to see in benchmark reviews that so often are left out or overlooked:
- Comparisons only between processors at similar price points
- Ideally, taking into consideration the overall cost of the processor + motherboard if possible
- Comparisons only of oc'd versus oc'd or non-oc'd versus non-oc'd parts
- Inclusion of compiler benchmarks (i.e. benchmarks of parallell compilations of very large software code bases)
- Investigation into the compiler optimizations used for 'standard' benchmarks. I always get the feeling that many benchmarks that favor Intel highly often do so in part because the compiler that was used to compile the benchmark program favors Intel. I think that the gcc compiler toolchain is fairly agnostic and usually Linux based benchmarks show a different picture than Windows based ones because of this. I really would like to see a site explore this issue further, especially because 99% of the software I run is compiled by gcc and so gcc-compiled code is what I really care about.
A site that answered some or all of these questions would definitely get my loyal readership!
* Which motherboard? There are dozens available for each chipset. X58 motherboards alone range in price from $179 to $699. You seem to think that we have access to every possible processor and motherboard, and we don't: we only have what vendors send us to review.
* I explained before why comparing multiple overclocked processors wasn't feasible given the time frame for the article. As I explained earlier I'm still unconvinced it's ever a good idea.
* Compiler benchmarks? As a programmer, I might find them interesting, but I think most of our readers could care less.
* Investigation into compiler optimizations: Now, this is a good idea, but it's beyond the scope of a simple processor comparison; it needs its own article. While 99% of the software you run may be compiled by gcc, 99% of the software most other people run isn't.
I also include the premise that people generally have a target price range that they are willing to pay for individual components of their system. Now this is a little less solid of a premise because I can certainly see people saying "I'd like to spend $200 on a processor, but if there is a processor for $300 that is twice as fast, I'd seriously consider it". However, if that person was willing to go up to $300 to pay for the twice-as-fast processor, then they'd probably also want to consider all of the other $300 processors available to see if there is an even better processor at that price point. In either case, the most useful comparison to make is for processors in the same price range, because whatever dollar figure a system builder ends up at, they would want to make sure they're getting the best deal at that price; or at the very least, that they're not passing up a much better processor should they be willing to stick with a slightly slower part for other reasons (brand loyalty, already owning compatible components, etc).
Given those two premises, I see the most useful information to someone looking to purchase a processor being comparing similarly overclocked processors (i.e. not overclocked, or overclocked with the same effort and cost put into it), at similar price points.
Now, not every article has to be about this type of value comparison - an article can certainly be about something less practical like "how far do you have to overclock an 1100T - costs be damned - to match the performance of a stock 980X", but this was not that article. This article attempted to make lots of value comparisons while violating both of the premises I set forth previously.
Hence, my conclusion that the comparisons were meaningless (for someone who is actually considering buying either processor). If you accept my premises, they were. If you are just looking for comparisons in the abstract without any value considerations, then the article was fine - except that in that case it wasted too much verbage actually making value comparisons that were not the point of the article.
We can't please everyone, and with the time constraints for most projects we aren't afforded the opportunity to dig as deep as we'd like.
If x, then meaningless. Meaningless means "has no meaning." Even if we take your premise as true, people may still get useful information out of the article, and thus your premises don't follow directly to the conclusion, and you have an invalid argument.
I along with others are still awaiting a reply, to my comments/questions, on your review of the 1075T.
Could you please spare some time to answer my queries there, thank you.
Ty,From Turkey..