AMD Phenom II X6 1090T and 1055T Six-Core Processor Review

[Apoptosis]

Great review! Nice to see that somebody pointed out the Vcore readings in the CPU-Z screenshots. I'm wondering about that as well and assuming I didn't mis-read anything, other review sites are saying that CPU-Z ain't reading the Vcore properly.

Since you reviewed the 1090T in the overclocking section, can we see some multiplier overclocking and a combination of both HT and multiplier overclocking?

For the Intel Core i7 CPUs, was hyper-threading enabled? I'm going to guess that HT is enabled. Also, is it possible for you to throw in some Core iX benchmarks as well?

Yes, Hyper-threading was enabled... I didn't do multiplier overclocking as the GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard wouldn't allow me to increase the multiplier manually... When I increased it to say 18x the board would default back to 16x. I could lower the multiplier, but just not increase it... It was a strange issue. For days no one at Gigabyte or AMD could tell me what was wrong. In fact no one at Gigabyte USA even had a six-core AMD processor as of yesterday to confirm my findings. This morning I got an e-mail from Gigabyte Taiwan informing me this:

Could you please try to disable a option in BIOS called " Core Performance Boost" under Advanced chipset feature page?
This is due to 1090T is a BE, its multiplier can go up to 20X. But if enable cpu feature " core performance boost", it will auto adjust according to cpu loading under Windows.
Hope it's not too late for your testing, and also hope it helps. Please let me know if it works for not, thanks.

As you can see having 'core performance boost' enabled wouldn't allow you to increase the multiplier even though it showed 20x after a restart... frustrating to say the least. I tried overclocking with the multiplier and got back up to 4.2GHz on air, so the results didn't change much.

[lacrossetown]

I love AMD

right on dude I love them too and there 300 dollar hexacore compared to asus's1000 thousand dollar hexacore what a big price difference
and great review once again and giving great info much better then those newegg guys realy is great to have a solid review site in you arsenal of searching

[BiGg RiE]

Thanks for the feedback! TigerDirect is doing a $50 rebate on Phenom II X6 processors so you can get the 1090T for $250 and the 1055T for $150 from 4/27 to 4/30, which is a great deal. As for motherboards... I have 890FX boards here, but they are honestly no different than 890GX boards other than the dual PCIe x16 lanes... For single GPU use I saw no real performance difference. AMD claims they have better overclocking, but that is just because they have optimized BIOS's on them. I wanted to review the board for launch day also, but with 21 pages I figured this was enough already! I'll have a review up soon of an 890FX board, but have to get motivated...

Ok but here's my dilemma, 2 system options:
*snip*

No need for a $300 X58 board when a $200 X58 with SATA6/USB3 exists.

Asus P6X58D-E -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Thuban competes with Bloomfield. If/when Intel releases cheaper 32nm quad/hex-core CPUs AMD will once again be playing second fiddle.

Hey Gomeler, yea that was my original choice... I went into my local Fry's and the techs there suggested that board for me... the guys there said coupled with an i7 930 and 6GB of 1600 ram would be a pretty sick gaming rig.. and be able to handle everything else I could throw at it to boot! 100 bucks is a big difference... and it could go towards a SSD for my Windows 7 install or a 2nd 5770.... idk.. are there any benefits to the Asus over the Gigabyte mobo's mentioned above? I mean based off the current setup I have in my Sig.. I'm sure to see some serious performance improvement already either way I go.. and I'm most likely gonna try to recycle alot of what I have now and re-purpose it for a media server for the crib!

Thanks guys for all your input it's really helped me out alot! LR is the Shizz!

[DJ Tucker]

Overall i think you should go intel as ok they are more expensive but until we see the use of six cores it won't be needed!

[techking13]

AWESOME!!!

[hnzw_rui]

Brain's kinda melting from catching up on Thuban reviews so figured I'll just ask instead of doing the math myself. Assuming the 1090T and i7-930 are both overclocked to 4GHz (and both Turbo Core and Turbo Boost disabled), which would be faster? Also, will either be dominating the other across the board or is it going to be a mixed bag (e.g. video encoding: 1090T, gaming: i7-930, etc)?

[skier]

Brain's kinda melting from catching up on Thuban reviews so figured I'll just ask instead of doing the math myself. Assuming the 1090T and i7-930 are both overclocked to 4GHz (and both Turbo Core and Turbo Boost disabled), which would be faster? Also, will either be dominating the other across the board or is it going to be a mixed bag (e.g. video encoding: 1090T, gaming: i7-930, etc)?

well, comparing 3DMark Vantage CPU scores w/out physx (all at ~4GHz, vantage scales mostly linearly per additional core/thread per architecture):
CPU/Score/Total Threads Used
i7 980: 37,000 -12
i7 920: 25,000 --8
i7 860: 24,500 --8
P II X6: 20,400 --6
i5 750: 18,500 --4
Q8200: 16,000 --4
P II X4: 13,600 --4
A II X4: 12,000 --4
i5 670: 11,600 --4
i3 530: 11,100 --4
E8500: 8,000 ----2
P II X2: 6,800 ----2
A64 X2: 5,500 ---2
sempr: 3,300 ----1


technically phenom scales more appropriately, the i7 920 scores should be around 36k, and 980X should be 55k based on being double/triple the score of the i5 750(native quad) so threads don't quite do all the work a core does, yet

*will update for more CPUs, I just already had all those written down

[skier]

huh just realized a normal i7 is like an intel 6-core(performance wise, the 4 extra threads make up two cores) going by linear scalability of frequency and # of cores, which would put intel about 4k above the PIIX6, core for core, clock for clock

now i really want to see the 980X @ 4GHz, @ 6cores (instead of 12 threads total) to see if it matches the 920 @8threads

[BiGg RiE]

huh just realized a normal i7 is like an intel 6-core(performance wise, the 4 extra threads make up two cores) going by linear scalability of frequency and # of cores, which would put intel about 4k above the PIIX6, core for core, clock for clock

now i really want to see the 980X @ 4GHz, @ 6cores (instead of 12 threads total) to see if it matches the 920 @8threads

I'd like to see the results from this as well, seems extremely interesting to say the least! Thanks for the work and effort, much appreciated!

[hnzw_rui]

well, comparing 3DMark Vantage CPU scores w/out physx (all at ~4GHz, vantage scales mostly linearly per additional core/thread per architecture):
CPU/Score/Total Threads Used
i7 980: 37,000 -12
i7 920: 25,000 --8
i7 860: 24,500 --8
P II X6: 20,400 --6
i5 750: 18,500 --4
Q8200: 16,000 --4
P II X4: 13,600 --4
A II X4: 12,000 --4
i5 670: 11,600 --4
i3 530: 11,100 --4
E8500: 8,000 ----2
P II X2: 6,800 ----2
A64 X2: 5,500 ---2
sempr: 3,300 ----1

Thanks for this!

By the way, was Turbo Core and Turbo Boost enabled for the review?