This week AMD unleashed a new processor to the world. While not quite to the fanfare as an over-hyped Apple product launch, their latest creations, the Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2GHz Black Edition and Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz processors represent something that many AMD users have been looking forward to for a while now. Though not quite a match for the highly rated INTEL Core i7 980X 6-Core processors, AMD has created something extremely special for those of us with a regular salary but still have an insatiable need for performance. How about a 6-Core processor starting at $209.99 US?
The AMD Value Proposition Strikes Again!
AMD may not currently have a CPU to compete with INTEL’s latest and greatest, but they don’t have to have one. Instead of having a head to head race, they’ve stuck to what they’ve done best which is to provide the best features at the best possible price. Just recently we checked out their AMD 890GX platform which gives us an integrated graphics card that supports DirectX 10 and even has dual monitor support without having to buy another video card. The platform also gave us SATA 3.0, USB 3.0, DDR3 and support for every AM3 and AM2+ they have ever made (including the poster child of today’s review) all for as little as $129.99US based on a very capable MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard.
AMD takes that same line of thinking with their new 6-core processors. While the INTEL Core i7 980X 6-core happily hangs out in top dog territory at over $1099 US, the AMD six shooter starts the party off at $209.99 US with their entry level 1055T 2.8GHz while enthusiasts will love the 1090T Black Edition 3.2GHz unit for $309.99 US. Since the 1090T is a Black Edition, that means that those brave enough to bump some voltages and do some overclocking may see even more value. Even novices can sit back and enjoy with the help of AMD’s own Overdrive software.
So to you and me, the Thuban represents a pretty phenomenal value in a true 6-core processor, aimed at competing with INTEL’s lower level Core i7 Quads-Cores and especially INTEL’s Core i5 line up. But we’re not going to tell you to jump ship from INTEL. Instead, we’re going to explore whether or not all you patiently waiting AMD users should make the jump to a six shooter or not.
Now before we get to looking at pretty graphs with numbers, let’s check out some of the new deal-maker features of the Phenom II X6 CPUs.
More Cores Without the Calories
First off, AMD hasn’t reinvented the wheel. Fundamentally, what they’ve done is taken the proven Phenom II X4 platform and squeezed in an extra two cores. The two new cores have an extra 512K of L2 cache on-board which takes the total amount of cache on the chip to 9MBs vs the 8MBs of the Phenom II X4s. Secondly, they’ve done this without having to increase power consumption. In fact, both the Phenom II X4 965 and the new Phenom II X6 1090T have exactly the same TDP rating of 125Watts. So for those of you afraid of burning a hole in your motherboards, it’s all good. More cores. No power consumption penalty.
Hitting the Turbo Boost Core(s)…
In the new X6, AMD has recognized that more cores aren’t always the way to go. Sometimes, a couple of really fast cores does the job better than a bunch of cores altogether. Taking a page out of INTEL’s Turbo Boost book, AMD has come up with their own version called Turbo CORE, or more accurately Turbo CORE(s). The “T” in the 1090T and 1055T stands for this.
In a nutshell, it allows the CPU to dynamically overclock up to three of its own cores to provide extra performance. In the case of the 1090T pictured in the screenshot, we see that a couple of the cores have hit 3.6GHz, one is at 3.2GHz, which is the stock CPU speed, and the rest of them are clocked way down. This is the Turbo CORE technology dynamically overclocking the core most under demand and under-clocking the ones that aren’t being utilized as much, all while keeping the specified 125W TDP. AMD also gives you the option, through AMDs Overdrive software, to boost down to only one CPU (to save power) or up to five CPUs (at the expense of rated TDP).
Amongst all the dynamic Turbo CORE’ing, the CPU still takes advantage of all power saving technologies to reduce power consumption during less aggressive usage scenarios. You can also shut all this off and overclock all the cores to oblivion if you wish too.
No. You Won’t Have to Buy A New Board.
One of AMD’s biggest value propositions is the fact that they realize consumers don’t want to buy a new board every year. Consumers do want the ability to upgrade their CPU with a simple drop in upgrade. This has been a hallmark of AMD technology and has been one of the things that they touted very proudly at their AMD Tech Tours over the years. AMD has promised that over 160+ motherboards will have BIOS updates to support the new Phenom II X6 CPUs. Unlike INTEL boards that seem to randomly change sockets, making your board obsolete for the next upgrade, that AM3 or AM2+ board that you have in your existing AMD rig will probably work just fine with this new chip.
Overall, the Phenom II X6 has quite a lot to offer existing AMD users and new users. The fact that you can get a six core workstation or high performance gaming machine going for under $1000 US is pretty appealing to people looking for a new system, while the ability to fetch a top of the line upgrade for as little as $209.99 US is also very appealing. It also makes spending $1000+ US for just a CPU somewhat silly. But wait…there’s one more thing…
Introducing The New AMD 890FX Chipset
AMD’s 890GX chipset, which was just released in March 2010, is already a pretty fantastic value and a great performer for the price. However, with the launch of the new flagship CPU, they needed a new flagship supporting chipset. Something without the integrated graphics but with the same decent SB850 southbridge with SATA 3.0 (6Gbps). Add an extra PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot running at x16, increase the overclocking headroom for enthusiasts, and add a new hardware IOMMU (I/O Memory Management Unit) that produces increased system stability in virtualized and non-virtualized environments for those hardcore workstation people, and you get the new 890FX chipset.
GIGABYTE’s Take On The 890FX – The GA-890FXA-UD7
We were one of the few fortunate sites that got their hands on the new GA-890FXA-UD7 board for reviewing our shiny new Phenom II X6 1099T CPU. The board should be hitting the stores this week. Besides the now legendary good looks, logical layout and overclocking pedigree, GIGABYTE’s 890FX interpretation features the most amount of PCI-Express slots of all the launch partners. While everyone is happy with the requisite four full sized PCI-Express 2.0 slots (running at x8 each if you use them all. x16 if you use one or two), GIGABYTE has upped the ante and specified six of them on their board (only four of them are 8x. The other two are 4x when fully populated).
This board is really well built and feels that way, from the high quality assembly to the selection of solid capacitors, fully covered chokes, and 2.0 oz copper PCB which is also known as their Ultra Durable 3 technology . The board comes with a watercooling block on the northbridge preinstalled with the option to change it to a larger passive unit if H20 isn’t your thing. The board continues its laundry list of features with it’s unique 3x powered USB 2.0/3.0 slots that supply enough power to properly juice up hungry USB peripherals like hard drives and iPads.
The board also comes equipped with a hardware based CPU Core unlocking chip that allows you to more reliably unlock disabled cores in your AMD CPU. You also get all of GIGABYTE’s more popular features like Dual BIOS, onboard debug LED, onboard quick switches popular with overclockers, and their precision OV which provides more levels of voltage control and protection.
Other unique features include their eSATA connectors that double as USB connectors when they are not being used as eSATA, their Dual Smart LAN which automagically switches the network adapter if one goes down without you having to physically unplug and replug the cable (or teams them up for more bandwidth).
The GA-890FXA-UD7 joins boards like the MSI 890FXA-GD70 at $179.99 US and two ASUS Boards, the M4A89GTD PRO at $199.99 US and it’s big brother, the Crosshair IV Formula at $229.99 US at launch. The GIGABYTE should hit with a price of $249.99US for their GA-890FXA-UD7 and a lower end GA-890FXA-UD5 will come in at $179.99US. We’ll be doing a full review of the UD7 in the next few days so stay tuned.
Test System Setup
We’ve already met the motherboard. Now we need to make sure you know what else we’ve got in our “Thuban Six Shooter” test system. Our test system is based on the specs that AMD sets out for what they call their “Vision Black” platform which includes an AMD Phenom II X6 CPU, 890FX motherboard, DDR3 1600 memory and an HD 58xx series GPU. However, in order to put the hurt on the CPU, we decided to go for an HD 5570 GPU and regular DDR3 1333 MHz memory.
- CPU(s): AMD Phenom II X6 “Thuban” 1090T 3.2GHz Black Edition; AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz Black Edition; AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2GHz Black Edition
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7 (F1 BIOS)
- Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333 MHz 8GB Quad Channel Memory Kit
- Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB (Catalyst 10.3 Driver)
- Hard Drive: INTEL X25 80GB SATA2 SSD
- CPU Cooler: Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler
- Power Supply: Ultra Products X4 750 Watt Modular ATX Power Supply
- Optical Drive: LG SATA DVD Writer
- Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
- Other: Two CoolerMaster 120mm Case Fans
Normally we’d use a 4GB DDR3 kit, but with some of the chosen tests, we’d easily use up all 4GBs of memory, which would just put the hurt on the SSD and that could affect the results. Again, a weaker GPU was used to make the CPU do a lot more of the heavy lifting in our benchmarks. All latest driver updates as of this writing were used including latest BIOS. Next we’ll run you through all those graphs with the pretty numbers. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll know whether to ditch that older Phenom II CPU of yours in exchange for the new hotness.
Benchmarking Notes
We wanted to find as many benchmarks as possible that take advantage of the extra cores, from rendering a real video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, to games that are known to be able to take advantage of multi-core processors. We’ll also be comparing all of the listed CPUs in the benchmarks so we have a better understanding of which types of applications would benefit most from the extra cores on-board. For the X6 1090T, we kept Turbo CORE enabled for all tests because it is a feature of the CPU.
With the exception of the Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 rendering test, all of the benchmarks in this tests are free to download and allow easily reproducible results with your own system. Unless otherwise stated, we used default settings with the only change being the resolution to 1920×1080 where available. We maxed out the settings in the games wherever there was a global setting available, else we went with defaults.
3DMark Vantage
This benchmark allows us to compare fairly across the different CPUs we’ve chosen to test. Since this test has some very heavily multi-threaded benchmarks, it is our hope that the more cores you have, the better the performance will be.
Based on the results, we can see that more cores does equal more performance to a point. The X6 does have a lead over the X2 and X4 in the CPU score, but the GPU score has the race nearly neck and neck with a dead lock in the 3DMark Score which we set to “High”. This may give us a general direction of how the rest of the gaming benchmarks will go.
PCMark Vantage x64
This benchmarks allows us to see the performance of our CPUs in different productivity scenarios. From video encoding to photo manipulation. Comparing the CPUs across these standardized benchmarks should give us an idea of whether or not there is an advantage to going with more cores and where.
The results tell us that the extra threads provided by the X6 give us a specific advantage in music, TV&Movies and the overall lead. The advantage overall for those areas was enough to pull it ahead, but we can also see that in some areas like productivity, communication, gaming and even HDD, that more cores does not always equal greater performance. In this case, we can surmise that the higher clock speed of the X4 was more of an advantage.
SiSoftware SANDRA
The various categories of the tests provided by this benchmark give us a good look at the raw performance of each CPU. Its standardized nature provides us with a way to compare different CPUs, even ones not tested today.
The results give us a good snapshot of the brute strength provided by the X6 CPU over it’s lesser cored brethren. We can see clearly that the extra cores make a difference and should reflect in applications that can use the extra threads. Things like mathematical modeling, computational programs and rendering engines should see a lot of benefit.
Now that we’ve gotten through our major synthetic benchmarks, we will start moving progressively to more real world benchmarks. This should hopefully start to give us an idea of where we want the extra cores and maybe where we don’t need them as much.
Cinebench 11.5
Cinebench is one of the few standardized tests that can really shake and bake a CPU. It also takes full advantage of extra cores and threads. Let’s see if that’s true with our band of merry CPUs.
As we can see, our results from this test clearly show that the brute strength from SiSoft SANDRA and encoding tests in PCMark Vantage reflect what we’re seeing here. The more cores you have, the faster your rendering gets completed. You can also see the Turbo CORE technology kick in for the single core tests, taking three of the CPUs on the X6 to 3.6Ghz, while the X4 sits at 3.4GHz. The OpenGL tests are clearly hitting the wall with the HD 5570.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
One of the things that sees the most benefit from extra cores is video rendering. It also has the most to gain because it can literally shave hours off a big project. We’ve taken the project files that created this video on our YouTube Channel and have used it to compare the performance of our CPUs.
It’s a definite no brainer. If you want to shave a bunch of time off your video projects, you will want to pick up the new Phenom II X6 1090T. Considering that we’ve already shaved four minutes off our rendering times over the X4 and over 11 minutes over the X2, on a three minute and forty-three second video, you can imagine how much time could be saved on longer video projects.
Now that we’ve done some work, it’s time to play some games.
Heaven Demo v1.0
The Heaven Demo by Unigine gives us the ability to see how well extra cores can contribute to games like MMORPGs and apps that have large immersive worlds. The Heaven Demo also allows us to compare performance from OpenGL to DirectX 11 and everything in between. We’ve chosen DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 to compare for the purpose of our tests.
It looks like more cores are good, but it seems that any more than four cores is not providing any benefits. If you play WoW, you might be OK hanging on to your X4.
World in Conflict (DirectX 10)
Real Time Strategy (RTS) games like World in Conflict not only have detailed graphics, but also a lot of units on the screen controlled specifically by the CPU. These games typically do benefit from more cores. Let’s see if that’s true.
As we can see, even a whole bunch of cores won’t help this game out. Though it seems that extra cores up to four does give a distinct advantage over two cores, six cores does nothing. A more powerful GPU is needed here. Let’s see if a DirectX 11 RTS game sees any benefit from the extra cores.
Battle Forge (DirectX 11)
Battle Forge is another RTS title that should benefit from extra cpu cores. Let’s see if that’s true.
Based on the results, it looks like the four faster cores in the X4 965 are of some benefit over the multiple slower cores of the X6 1090T. The X2 is clearly out matched here.
Street Fighter IV (DirectX 9).
Despite being a DirectX 9 title, it does support multi-core processors. It’s also a very popular game that many of us grew up with. The latest version is definitely far more demanding with much improved graphics. Let’s see how well it uses the extra cores.
It certainly looks like Street Fighter IV does like a couple of extra cores and benefits are seen using the X4 over the X2. However, advantages of using the X6 over the X4 is definitely much smaller.
Resident Evil 5 (DirectX 10).
While we’re on a CAPCOM kick, Resident Evil 5 also supposedly takes advantage of multi-core CPUs. We run the DirectX 10 version of the benchmark to see if there are any benefits from going with extra cores of glory.
No glory for the X6 here. It’s pretty much neck and neck with the X4, but gets edged out ever so slightly by the faster CPU cores on the X4. There’s no hope for the X2 as it lags behind. There is definitely benefit for multiple cores to a certain extent.
Far Cry 2 (DirectX 10)
With a huge destructible world, Far Cry 2 should give our CPUs a good work out. I’m going to say that what we’ve been seeing so far with the four cores being the sweet spot will happen here.
So it looks like we’re going to get the same results. Two cores aren’t so great, four cores are better, but six cores don’t seem to make a difference. It looks like a large number of titles are JUST starting to take advantage of four cores and it might be a while till we see titles optimized enough to show advantages with two more cores. Nonetheless, we soldier on.
HAWX (DirectX 10)
Our last game is the very pretty looking HAWX from Ubisoft. This game has elements of a Flight Simulator with huge maps and multiple bogies, missiles and other units that need a competent CPU to control, characteristic of an RTS. We’re hoping to see something from our extra cores in this test.
Although we get a good boost in the highest possible frame rates for the X6 by a mile, we don’t see more than a single frame difference in our average frame rates. However, we do see a significant difference between the X2 to the X4, but it would seem that extra cores above four does us no good here yet again.
Power Consumption and Temperatures
For the most part, games are a bust, but video rendering and other applications that provide heavy computational work loads relish in the presence of the Phenom II X6 1090T. However, if you’re a gamer that does make videos, rip music or do heavy graphics projects, having the extra cores might not be a bad idea, overall. The question is, will having the extra two cores suck anymore power? We took full system readings of our test system which each CPU to see what the impact on the socket is.
Well, it looks like there is a minor environmental impact when your system is idling with two extra cores, but no environmental impact to having the extra two cores under load. This is consistent with AMD’s design which places the TDP of both the X4 965 and X6 1090T at 125W. Despite the idle power hit, applications that take full advantage of the extra cores, like in the case of video rendering, will allow you to turn your system off faster after a hard days work, which saves you power. You’ll also save a ton of time too, waiting for your projects to finish processing.
As for temperatures, our X6 1090T idled at around 16.5 C and hit its ceiling at 34.5 C under load using our Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler. This is really decent and gives me hope that we can hit a decent overclock with little to no added voltage.
Overclocking
Taking any Black Edition CPU on an overclocking trip is easy mainly because all you have to do is bump up the multiplier and see what happens. If it won’t boot at a particular multiplier, just add more voltage till it does. Here’s what we found out about our X6 1099T.
Based on our attempts, we were able to come up with a mostly stable overclock of 4.1 GHz for all six cores with a little too much voltage (1.6 volts) in my humble opinion. However, temperatures were still within normal parameters, idling at 19 C and reaching 47 C at its worst. I say mostly stable because, while it was stable for benchmarking, it would not remain stable for the Premiere Pro CS4 rendering test. If it fails for a real world test, then it’s not really stable despite the success with the canned benchmarks. Games however seemed to be OK though, but they do seem to benefit more from the higher clock speed than the addition of the two extra cores as observed in the tests.
I was really impressed with the increase in the Cinebench 11.5 CPU test score overclocked. The overclock took it from 5.65 pts to 7.09 pts at 4.1 GHz. This puts it directly ahead of a much more expensive $949 Core i7 975 at 6.15 pts and right behind INTEL’s $1049 6-Core 980x at 8.64 pts. That’s definitely impressive for a CPU that’s less than one third the price of the Core i7 975. If AMD can get some better yields out, we’ll be looking at some hopefully stable 4.0 GHz six guns from AMD in the very near future at continued affordable prices.
Final Thoughts
AMD has really done it again. They’ve brought us the best mix of features and performance and provided them to us at the best possible price. Never would I ever had thought that we could get to a 6-core CPU for $209.99 US (for the 1055T). The 1090T is even more impressive given that extra performance that can be squeezed out of it for gaming duties and benchmarks at only $309.99 US. Both of which are substantially cheaper than any of INTEL’s 6-Core CPUs and still cheaper than even INTEL’s top hyper threaded Core i7 quad cores.
While ultimate performance still doesn’t compare to INTEL’s top drawer, AMD definitely provides the best bang for the buck by far. If you think about it, you could build a whole system for the price of one of INTEL’s top chips. Although it’s unlikely that you’ll drop your INTEL rig and come to AMD at this point if you already have a Core i7. If you’re already an AMD user, the new 6-cores are definitely an attractive proposition. But it would totally depend on how you use your existing system as to whether or not you’d see any benefit to adding a couple more cores.
Based on the benchmarks so far, we can pretty much conclude that the things that benefit most from AMD’s Phenom II X6 1099T 6-Core CPU are video rendering and any application where heavy computations are needed. Animation, CAD, and other heavily threaded and demanding programs would totally benefit. Where things aren’t so great are in games where we’ve taken a number of known multi-core friendly games and have found that they seem only optimized up to four cores. The 6-core chips are just reaching the market and it was only recently that game developers have really even embraced quad core CPUs and optimized for them. I suspect that it will still take some time till the games catch up to the hardware.
With full support for over 160+ existing motherboards via a BIOS update, the Phenom II X6 1090T is definitely desirable for anyone upgrading from a dual core and was thinking about a quad core. If you can use it to its potential, then it’s definitely the one to go for given all its performance benefits. Budget users looking for all the value they can muster would be hard pressed to find a better value for a complete high performance 6-core system for around a $1000. Well done AMD!
Pros
- 6-cores for $295 US!
- Unmatched performance at this price point
- Over 160 existing AMD motherboards supported with just a BIOS update
- You can build a whole high performance 6-Core workstation/gaming machine for under $1000!
Cons
- You might find yourself buying one even though you don’t need one!
Overall Rating: 9.5 / 10.0
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The AMD Phenom II X6 “Thuban” 1090T 6-core Black Edition Processor – Photo Gallery
