Conclusion
AMD has made some much needed improvements to their second generation Phenom processors. It was a very welcome sight to finally see an AMD quad core processor break the 3GHz barrier and to do so while keeping power consumption in check. Although we’d consider Phenom II more of an evolutionary design than a revolutionary one, there is no denying that AMD got 45nm right. The amount of overclocking headroom and huge increase in cache memory are very good signs that tell us that the Phenom architecture may yet have some life in it.
We’d also like to make special mention of AMD’s implementation of Cool’N’Quiet 3.0 as we were very impressed with the processor’s low idle power consumption. The introduction of a third intermediate power state and an even lower idle state was a nice addition. AMD’s decision to stick with the AM2+ platform was also a very wise move in our eyes as buyers can continue to use previous generation motherboards. Even AMD’s upcoming DDR3 based Phenom IIs can be used in older AM2+ boards.
As much as we welcomed the improvements, we still can’t help but feel that Phenom II is too little too late for AMD and that this is the Phenom we should have seen over a year ago. The bottom line is that clock-for-clock, Phenom II is not more efficient than Intel’s Core 2, let alone the Core i7. Granted, the Core i7 is very expensive today due to the price of X58 motherboards and DDR3 memory, but this will change in due time as the platform matures. We do know that DDR3 versions of the Phenom II are on the way, but we seriously doubt that improved memory bandwidth and latency will do much for the processor. High bus speeds and heaps of memory bandwidth are definitely important, but not what is holding this processor back right now. Intel managed to do incredible things with their Core 2 processors on a downright archaic FSB based platform that was choked for bandwidth. AMD needs to do a major overhaul to dramatically increase the raw number crunching power of their next processor. Making the move to DDR3 is admittedly going to be an essential move as the market moves away from DDR2, but we really hope that AMD has some big things going on behind closed doors that we’re not hearing about.
Overall, we think AMD has taken an important step and that their entry into 45nm has been very successful. Now we must wait for AMD’s i7 challenger, which sadly isn’t here yet.
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