In a relevant "classic" match, MadShrimps compares two similarly equipped systemsbased around the midrange Intel Core i3-661 and AMD's fastest but still cheaper quadcore, Phenom II X4-965. Results are intriguing.

Hi Mike,

The page on the MadShrimps site seems to be broken.

Edit: when I clicked on the link on the main page, it worked:

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=1&artpage=4459&articID=980

AMD does offer some pretty good bang for the buck, at least <$150. If you're spending $200+ on a processor, Core i5/i7 is clearly the better choice. Unfortunately AMD isn't as competitive in power consumption, though. The i5 661 probably uses a good deal less power than the 965 + 785G setup.

They don't make it clear if they tested the C2 or C3 stepping of the Phenom II X4 965.

The C3 stepping runs at a lower stock voltage and handles lower Pstates so the idle power draw is better and surprisingly enough it benchmarks better as the additional pstates are handled at a lower level and allow for faster transitions to/from idle enough so that it affects benchmarks. In the case of the X4 965 it means the difference between 140W and 125W.

The Phenom II X4 925 is the only C3 that doesn't share specs with a C2 in that list and happens to be the cheapest C3 quad core. It gets you down to 95W and cuts the dollar figure noticeably from the X4 965.

Unfortunately there are no C3 stepping X3 processors so the next step down is to dual core model number confusion with the C2/C3 stepping on all of those and 80W rating on both steppings. Likely wide variation in the samples if you tread in those waters.

I'd still look at the Phenom II X3 705e C2 stepping as the next interesting choice at 65W.

US prices after shipping without tax:

2.5 X3 705e 65W $130
2.8 X4 925 95W $140
3.4 X4 965 125W $190

Still given the price curve the X4 925 C3 95W looks like the sweet spot to me until/if they ever release a X3 C3 stepping with L3 cache.

If you look at the CPU-Z charts they showed, it appears to be a C2 stepping.

Yes they do, it's a C2. Look at the CPU, it's a HDZ965FBK4DGI.

Unless power consumption is the number one priority I would never consider a dualcore Core i5 over Phenom II 965. When coupled with a powerful gpu it is quite a bit faster compared to dualcore Core i5 at higher resolutions.
AMDs fastest quadcores might not be comparable to the Core i7 quads in average performance but otherwise they are damn fine CPUs.

There's an interesting comparison at Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=3724&p=1

The i3-530 gives much better bang for the buck than the IGP i5's

I hate to shoot the messenger, impolite, but relevant? This is like comparing a Mercedes to a Hummer or an 8oz hammer to an 8# sledge. Except that they have similar price points and both run x86 software, they are about as unlike each other as any two CPU's I can think of.

If you look at the power comparisons at the bottom of this page, you'll see that the 965 consumes 2.6 times the power of the 661 under load, 274W vs 110W. That's incredible. Since Silence and Power are inversely proportional to one another, no one in their right mind would ever consider a 965 in a silent rig.

Good, got that off my chest, thanks for the link.

BTW, the 661 is a Core i5, not an i3, it has Turbo Boost, picky, picky.

DanceMan and Mats good catch.

Mats, the key phrase was "They don't make it clear". No where in the text does it say and I didn't click through every single picture to find that detail. It was bad enough that I had to click through 10+ pages to read the article, I wasn't about to load every image as well.

If the only place you see mention of the stepping is a screen shot or a photo of the heat spreader you can reasonably assume the author didn't consider it.

He does mention the 125W TDP even though he did tests with the 140W part. That may just be a limitation of review samples versus general availability but it makes me wonder if he knew which part he tested and what the rating for that part was.

I'm pretty sure he knew what part he was testing, but without proper gear to do power usage tests he decided to not focus on this "in detail", but not neglect the fact either, hence why he mentioned on the last page the power consumption wise the Core i5 will be the big winner. Rated TDP is not to be relied on in any which way IMHO.

overall though I'm not impressed with Core i5/i3 at all; it's not valid desktop CPU replacement for anybody with a dedicated VGA, and those who already have a Core 2 Duo (Wolfdale especially) won't see a speed bump worth spending money on new motherboard & memory.

those "stuck" with Athlon K8 or "Pentium D" can go either way, AMD for better price/performance, Intel for better performance/watt. It depends where your priorities lie

I wonder why the Anand review test idle and load consumption with a power hungry 5870 installed. Isn't the point of Clarkdale to use the on die IGP?

I mean like jmke said, the clarkdale is not suited for using a dedicated GPU.


Over at avsforum, a user posted the following wattage ratings:

"I got 25 Watts in idle mode (Windows desktop). This is for:

MB: Intel DH55DC
CPU: Intel i3-530
MEM: 2GB DDR3 1333
SSD: Intel X25-M G2
BRD: LG CH08LS"

Now that sounds like the idle mix of low consumption htpc setup the i3-530 is ideal for.

I believe the 5870 is his standard video card so other CPU's will have a reference. Also of note, he does not publish the PSU. When Clarkdale was released on Jan 7th, most of the reviewers used 600+W PSU, one used an 1100W PSU. Needless to say you don't need 1100W for 25W idle.

Sure was for me.

On the first page, they did test for load power consumption using integrated graphics. The Core i3-530 w/Gigabyte H57 board was at 69.6W load while the higher clocked Core i5-661 was at 72.3W load. Alas, I couldn't find any values for idle power consumption.

As for testing with the HD5870, I assume it's so they can do as close a comparison as they can on just the processor so they kept the rest of the variables constant.

The article title on the SPCR home page is a dead link.

New processors announced http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=3726

2.6 X4 910e 65W essentially replaces the X3 705e and X4 925 for the SPCR enthusiast. Gotta wonder how that list price will translate to retail.

And assuming this next one is a C3 stepping it'll be the cheap option to watch.

3.0 Athlon II X3 440 95W $85?

Nope. http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=895&page=2 shows it as a C2 stepping.

So the C3 choices are

2.6 X4 910e 65W
2.8 X4 925 95W

the 910e will likely have a small price premium over the 925 but the lower TDP is worth it to me at only one speed grade lower.

Hmm, I use a 955 @ 3.8Ghz in my near silent rig it replaced a 5050e and other than a ton more processing power there is no change in noise - loudest item is the Nexus 120mm case fan at 7v. Idles around 60 watts the 5050e was 35 watts. I have the PC set to go into standby after 30 minutes so the change in overall power use is trivial.
Steve

I believe the C3 Phenom II 720 is shipping, and soon also a 550BE as well as 555BE.

X2 550BE C3 HDX550WFK2DGM
X2 555BE C3 HDZ555WFK2DGM

I just spent a half hour searching for the C3 X4 925 and the C3 X3 720. I only found one store that had the X4 clearly marked as a C3 and they only charged a couple of dollars more than the cheapest so I'd say it was reasonably priced even there.

I couldn't find a part number for a X3 C3 at all. Maybe you are thinking of the Phenom II X3 740 which is rumored to be coming soon. That might catch my attention if it is a C3 stepping at 1/2 the cost of the 910e.

Oh and for those just looking for insane core action the Phenom II X6 1035T at 95W for six cores is rumored to be coming in May. That is just a few weeks away and should push down the price of older X2, X3, and X4 CPUs.

What I end up buying in the near future comes down to pricing and availability on C3 stepping parts.

I have owned an AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 revision for about 10 months now. 90% of reviews I have come across with had false idle/load power consumption readings, intentionally or not, had C2 in place or don't know what they are doing. I am sick of it, to be frank.

Long story short, 965 C3 isn't that power hungry as some people make it look like. If you know what you are doing, it wouldn't cost you a fortune in electricity bills.

My rig based on 785G with on-board graphics idles around 30 watts. Under load (Handbrake, C&Q off) @ stock it doesn't go beyond the 110W mark. Taken at the wall, with a more efficient PSU you can lower it. The system also has 2 mobile hdd's and a wi-fi card (ICS). If needed I can lower maximum power consumption further by downclocking it and / or disabling cores. Depending on the task at hand, I decide what is best. With 2 cores @ stock fully loaded, the system consumes around 75W.

Also this is very important to add, the stock voltage allows for a safe overclock to 3.8 Ghz which means if you are not after the clocks you can undervolt it quite a bit. This thing is [b]flexible[/b], is all I am trying to say... and of course in good hands with a good aftermarket cooler this thing is dead silent.

I also own a couple of energy efficient AMD CPUs and, of course, they offer greater performance per watt but at what cost? Those things are not cheap and a bit slow when you need the power.

To give you some food for thought, I have an exactly same system running an AMD Athlon X2 235e (45W) minus 1 mobile hdd and the wi-fi card, it idles around 25W. Under load (Handbrake, C&Q off) it takes about 55W. Roughly half of what 965 requires but there is one thing though, the 965 transcodes stuff about 2.7 times faster. You do the math, whether it's worth it or not.

Having said that, I am going to soon replace the 965 with an X6 as it offers quite a speed bump in what I do. I like Intel, I just don't want to pay the price premium they ask you for. I mean the total system cost.

I'm glad you posted this.

Yes, now having a 1090T I realize that I probably would have been happy with a 965BE 3.4ghz chip. I'm glad I bought what I did, but I probably dont need it.

I'm glad I went amd this round, theres a lot of bs benchmarks that make no sense out there. My jump from an e8400 with 1200mhz ram (that's a lot higher than stock) is enormous in all ways.

I now see why people get SSD's... it is because they own one of these upper end quads or sixes.

If i had a 965BE, I wouldnt probably upgrade. I guess 6 cores is always fun though I'm noticing it.

Another thing should be noted that "madshrimps" failed to note is that with a combo deal I spent 78 dollars on my MSI 890GXM-65 board, just something you can't compete with. Throw on a 160 dollar 965BE and for 238 dollars plus 90 dollars of fast ram, have a very powerful machine that honestly doesnt come close to 125 watt TPD

Yeah, no prob.


The 965 does offer a better value, however, it runs a bit hotter with less cores, so why anyone would want a warmer processor in the same power envelope? It is 2010 now. The "premium price" you paid is worth every cent, especially if you intend to overclock it. The unlocked multipliers never hurt.


Speaking of SSD. Standby works faster, if you know what I mean. For the money, you can build a decent raid around and have more storage. Also, when a drive fails (and they do) there is very little that you can recover


Depends on the usage though. Games-wise, 965 is very good. However, I do a lot more of video encoding and transcoding than anything else and that's where the additional cores really help. Even overclocked to 4.0 Ghz, the 965 trails far behind the 1090T @ stock. The only advantage the 965 has is lower idle power consumption, total about the same, which is great considering the core count. It does carry a hefty price tag though. For experiment's sake, I just ordered a 1035T 95W for about half the price, see if it likes me. It's too early to draw conclusions, come this weekend, I will have some data to play with.


Agreed. Especially when most of their CPUs come "overvolted" anyway. With a bit of tweaking, you can easily shave off some 30W of its "design spec". Best stability test in my book is real-world video encoding/transcoding, stresses most of the CPU parts . Nero Vision 10 is very good (it is particularly very "picky" to bad OC/voltage). MSI have recently released quite a few very good boards. They are my fav, for now. See how much you can undervolt your 1090T and retain stability under load. Frankly, I have no clue why AMD did not make them 3.4 @ stock. The E0 is much more superior to the "old" C3. You've made the right choice

Well it's good you think so.

I was wondering how lowering voltages works with the Core Boost and cool and quiet?

Most of these reviews suck really bad. They always leave out key pieces of info, like ACTUAL price vs. listed, board prices vs chip prices. They always talk about 149 dollar boards for AMD vs 199 for intel, and like, my board was $78 dollars and upper end.

I havent seen any decent review places try benchmarking with northbridge clock speed increased. It takes no bump in voltage, but performs super fast. I wonder what power draw more it takes. I need one of those kill-a-watt things.

It is a bit tricky since the further you go, clock-wise the more power is needed for Turbo. For less volts/power consumption I recommend you disable Turbo mode for a better overall overclock. If you do video editing, this is the way to go.

Cool and Quiet works very well, out of the box. There is some improvement over the Deneb tech. With the power settings set to Always On in Windows XP SP3, the Thuban drops half of the cores to the lowest state (800 Mhz) whilst a couple retain original clock. Whereas, the 965 C3 would give every core its full clocks under the same conditions. Setting to Minimal Power Management, would drop every core to 800 mhz and save about 5w of electricity. The gain you get in savings is easily negated by the performance degradation. Only a handful of apps can properly load the cores under this power scheme in Windows XP. The dumb-list is led by WinRAR, watching it try utilize the cores at 800 mhz is priceless. I wonder if that works the same on Win7.


I agree. Nothing can beat the AMD Sempron 140 unlocked in to X2.


Since I have got it, I changed half of electrical appliances in my house, hehe.

Not to hijack your talk, but: I have a 785G (MSI) and a couple of AMD critties (605E and 740BE) laying around (I'm usually an Intel kid).

Have you (jefecito & leet) any somewhat solid experience in 24/7-overclocking and/or undevolting such those combos? May any effort, in order to have them running appreciably cooler (you know, silence com,s from cold) or, on the contrary, a noticeable more (real world) perfomance be worthwile?

Please take note, my ram isn't bad but neither good (Kingston HyperX 1333 CL9).

Hello and I am sorry for such a late response.

Both those CPUs can be undervolted/underclocked, the 605E's power consumption can be easily dropped by about 15W so stock fan is sufficient for silent operation. The E series is designed to run hotter (about 70C), so this is another advantage, even the old C2 stepping operates very well. This is a good buy for HTPC.

Your RAM is fine, speaking of which I tested different sticks, 6-6-6-20 to 9-9-9-24. The difference is very small, in my opinion not worth it, unless you do FPS gaming at unreal resolutions, heavy photoshop editing and the like. Still, in my opinion, it is better to invest the difference elsewhere (another SSD/HDD drive for example).

Overclocking on stock voltage is worth doing it but not beyond. Performance per watt will really suffer, if you require more performance, buy a better CPU. Period.

Overall, Intel has better/more efficient chips but it is extremely difficult to find the right motherboard/CPU combination that you like and at a good price too. Onboard/die graphics can also be an important factor. Depending on how fussy you are and how extensive your required feature set is, though.

If I were you, I'd get rid of the 740BE and keep the 605E instead. Phenom's 2/4 extra performance not worth the extra watts they require. The X6 is the only Phenom worth the trouble until/if newer hexa-core Athlons show up.

In simple tasks, performance per clock, is the same.. whether it is Sempron 140 or Phenom X6 1090T. Whatever they say, it is +/- 5% difference, this is true for all non-L3-cache-dependant apps, non-overclocked condition. L3 does help when you heavily multi-task though (try benchmark that

The X6 Phenoms are very nice under load... but their idle power consumption is rather disappointing (about 10W higher than 605E), for 24/7 operation they are not the best picks, besides you'd need to spend on an aftermarket heatsink as well to ensure quiet operation under all circumstances. Stock fans get very load under load.

Best value is Sempron unlocked in to X2. Power consumption remains very much the same at idle. Not all can be unlocked tho... I have had two identical processors in the past week and one unlocked, the other didn't.

The "E" series should be well in demand for some time, selling them later? I don't see an issue there. Keep the board though, this is the best/most-efficient 785G board I have tested. Asus really dropped the ball in this sector in the last few years, what a shame.

Hope this helps.