Date:
Sunday , February 08, 2009
Author:
Kyle Bennett
Google +1

Phenom II Gets Affordable with DDR3 & AM3

AMD comes back today with the launch of its Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition and Phenom II X4 810 processors built on the AM3 socket platform that now allows enthusiasts to take advantage of the bandwidth that DDR3 has to offer. Along with that, these CPUs come in with very sub-$200 price points.

continued...

Hardware Testing Overview

For our testing we are now in a position to bring you some meaningful “apples to apples” with the AM3’s support of DDR3. We have chosen today to show all of our comparisons using DDR3-1600. No doubt that much of the DDR3 on the market today rated for 1600MHz is very pricey. Many more of you that end up with a Phenom II in your box will likely have 1333MHz DDR3 for this reason and a few more that we will talk about in our overclocking section.

All platforms tested here today have 4GB in a 2Up configuration. Even our Core i7 920 machine is using only dual channel DDR3-1600. All RAM used here today has used the exact same timings. 8-8-8-24-1T. Our Intel and AMD machines did use different sticks of Corsair RAM as these new AM3 processors did not like our new low voltage RAM that has been built for our Core i7 boxes. Worth mentioning though, is we simply used older DDR3 that we had on hand that will not work in our Core i7 boxes and it worked beautifully in our AMD systems.

We have also put into our testing today an Intel Core 2 Q8200 that currently sells for $170. Its stock speed is 2.33GHz, but we have overclocked it to 2.6GHz so we will have a clock for clock comparison with the X4 810. This CPU also suffers a memory bandwidth deficit since its RAM cannot be clocked at 1600MHz like our AMD platforms. Our Q8200 at 2.6GHz will have a DDR3-1480MHz memory. While certainly not in the same market, we have also included the Core i7 920 at stock speeds and a Core 2 Quad QX9770 which not only represents itself, but also every other variant of this Yorkfield CPU (Q9450, Q9550, and QX9650), all of which clock easily to 3.2GHz.

Test Setups

AMD: Phenom II X3 720 and X4 810 – ASUS M4A79T Deluxe, BFGTech 280 GTX OC, 2 x 2GB Corsair CM32048-1600C7DHXIN.

Intel: Core 2 Q8200 and Core 2 QX9770 – ASUS Rampage Extreme, BFGTech 280 GTX OC, 2 x 2GB Corsair TRX3X6G1600C8D.

Intel: Core i7 920 – ASUS P6T6 Deluxe, BFGTech 280 GTX OC, 2 x 2GB Corsair TRX3X6G1600C8D.

Common Components: Koolance EXOS 2 & CPU-345 water block water cooling system – Intel 80GB SSD – Western Digital 150GB HD – Thermaltake 1200W PSU.