Hardware AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Review

Nice review, i'm not sure when 7/10 identified a product that 'sucked' but that's not the impression the review gave me.

A solid upgrade for anyone looking for a cost effective performance boost on an AM2/AM3 system.

Looking at the gaming results, it just shows how little CPU 'grunt' you need these days to get a decent playable experience.

 

I've just read through the whole thread and I was going to put the 1090T in my media rig, so it looks like it'll have to be the 1100T. Yeah total over kill, but I don't care! I'll happily use a hammer to crack a nut.

 

I said it sucks for gaming. I've had two phenoms and they were perfect for everything else but when it comes to gaming, they just don't get the job done.

Saving money by buying a cheaper AMD (yes, they're cheap and that's nice) only to spend more on a video card makes no sense because part of the money spent on the video card will be a waste.

You're better off with a more powerful i5/i7 and a lesser powerful video card (for example a 460 instead of a 480). Obviously, it all depends on the resolution you play your games at. If over 9000 by over 9000 is what you use then you're better off with a better video card as it will certainly be the bottleneck.

 

I suppose that it depends on your definition of 'sucks' - i can play at my native resolution of 1920 x 1080 with everything on high in the vast majority of games with more than adequate minimum fps. Could i have more fps if i decided to invest in a new motherboard, cpu and RAM? Possibly. Would i notice the difference?Probably not.

If you're building from scatch i'd definitely agree that the i5 or i7 is a better option (now that the motherboards are reasonably priced and DDR3 RAM prices have dropped), but for a lot of people, the cost effective option is a Phenom II quad or even a dual or triple core Phenom/Athlon.

Their system won't 'suck' - unless they are looking to play at ultra high resolutions or on an eyefinity setup.

Just be happy that your choice of components met your requirements.

 

i bought i7 920-wish i had got the 930 instead! i got an 5850 but wish igot 5870 or nvidia's new card, you just gotta get what you can at the time and bite the bullet!!!!- i love my rig !!!! then oerclock the nuts of it my 5850(i'm no 'fanman' bangs along at 5870 speeds and my 920 is running at 3.66 . might crossfire my 5850 next or get a new nvidia card if got some spare cash soon!!!! happy gaming and argueing guys lol

 

I personally think Bit tech is a bit anti AMD (and yes im a mag subscriber)

I think this is a better way to look at the latest Thuban

From hothardware..

"The performance of your processor is only one facet of the performance of your system, and in most cases it's not the most important once you've hit the "fast enough" line. If your processor is in the AMD 965BE/Intel 930 class, your performance dollars are better spent on a good video card or SSD rather than a fancier CPU. While six cores are of little benefit to most users, if you want a hexacore CPU for media transcoding or just bragging rights, AMD gets you much of the performance of the Core i7-980x for a fraction of Intel's price. "

Really do thing CPC needs to give AMD a break....

 

Why? Just because you like that particular brand of CPU?

Bit-Tech and CustomPC are some of the most respected reviewers in the industry. They have never openly favoured on one side or the other. Just the best product for the task at the best value for money.

Some reviewers do favour one or the other and I can only speculate a relationship with said company. Whether thats being wined, dined and sixty.......wink, wink, you know what I mean!

By staying truly independent, BT/CPC can still hold their heads up high above the other so called experts and that's why we all still come here to suckle on their teet of awesomeness!

btw, I often don't wholeheartedly agree with their conclusions. I do however, respect their conclusions.

 

Your TF2 results do seem way out of line.

You say that a stock 1090T was bottlenecking a GTX 260 to 85fps.

However, back when I had my 1055T, I was running TF2 (1920x1200 with maxed out 8xAA 16xAF) on a HD 5850 and was hanging around 200fps.

I don't think that a Phenom II is a bottleneck in a Source game. I had a HD 5750 and upgraded to a HD 5850 and nearly doubled my FPS, which means the CPU was not bottlenecking the HD 5750 (which is around your GTX 260 performance). I feel there was some other issue causing your poor performance, although I have no idea what.

You do have very valid points about the huge performance domination Intel has now. Phenom II is still only marginally ahead of Core 2 Quad in clock-for-clock performance, and not even close to Nehalem, much less Sandy Bridge.

I bought my 1055T soon after launch, upgrading from an ancient single core Athlon FX-55 without doing sufficient research (figured more cores = better, and remembered AMD as being performance king, which it was from the time I joined this forum until Conroe was released). I realized how useless six cores were for gaming, and sold it to downgrade to a 2.13ghz Core 2 Quad and noticed a minimal performance loss in TF2. The extra 2 cores don't do anything for gaming, and the 667MHz decrease didn't give me nearly as much of a performance hit as I expected.

I agree with you that 'high-end' AMD hardware (basically anything they sell over $100) is pointless for gaming, as it has minimal improvement over used Core 2 hardware, and is worse for gaming than just about anything Nehalem. Only AMD I'd consider buying right now is an Athlon II X2 or similar with a tiny TDP for use in a HTPC or something like that, instead of a Celeron E3300 or whatever low end LGA 775 hardware Intel is still churning out. But my personal TF2 experience is that at 1920x1200, the video card is the bottleneck, at least with a HD 5850 or slower.

The Thuban is a great chip if you are doing heavily multithreaded stuff like those video encoding benchmarks, but not for gaming. I've purchased plenty of CPUs for gaming over the past few years, and the only two that I regretted were my Pentium 4 1.6GHz Williamette and my Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban. Both offered less performance than similarly priced competition, despite having either more cores or more clockspeed.

 

Im running all intel at the moment and may add an AMD server... So you could say im in the intel camp and I "facvour" intel.... However, I personally think, and looking at the overall balance of reviews of the 1100T that Bit Tech seem out of step here........ Having also installed some Thubans on other machines for other people, I have been very impressed and they have been very pleased... So my "real world" experience tells me a differnet story as well...

This is just my opinion BTW so not looking for a row snips.

 

Wow, sucky chips.


I have an X3 720 BE stock @ 2.8Ghz that runs at X4 3.3Ghz, my video card is a HD4870.
I run TF2 (32 player server) at an average of 130fps, with peaks up to 250 (close corridors).

Edit: THis is at 1920*1080 all settings maximum.

 

No problem matey, you are perfectly entitled to that.

 

Alrighty, that makes sense. I was wondering if you had noticed anomylous results, as some people report that having the HT link go above 2000 actually has a negative effect on performance, did you notice anything like that?

 

Can't say that I did. I'm don't think anyone else on the team has experienced anything along them lines either or I would have been made aware of the need to watch out for it.

 

I was always opened to the idea that something else was wrong but I came to the conclusion that phenoms suck (read; not good) for gaming because I had three of them and they all gave me crap (read; underwhelming) results. In the games I mentioned in my other replies, I got very minimal performance improvements switching from an X3 720 @ 3.4 to an X4 965 @ 3.8. That was disappointing but I was upgrading mostly in hope to hit the magical 4Ghz number.

The first phenom I had was a first generation Phenom 9500 Quad Core 2.2Ghz and it was complete shìt. I bought this Phenom, an Asus M3N72-D, 4GB of DDR2 and a BFG 9800GTX+ and I was actually pissed because it sucked. I was upgrading from a Pentium M 740 1.73@2.7Ghz on a CT479 itself on a P4C800-E Deluxe, 1GB of DDR1 and a Radeon X850XT and I was utterly disappointed. The Phenom couldn't even run UT2004 correctly. My awesome but old Pentium M could run the game at the framerate cap of 85 fps in all situation whereas the Phenom could never hit 85.

Obviously when I upgraded to the 720 ut2k4 was fine but tf2 etc weren't.





Damn that Pentium M was awesome. I could beat overclocked FX57 cpus with it for about half the price

My results sucked indeed but what can I say ... That's the numbers I had !

 

Hello! I made this account because I really wanted to reply to this: Phenom 2 is SLOWER than Core 2 Quad (Yorkfield) CLOCK FOR CLOCK, and sometimes even slower than Kentsfield. This happens in all reviews from sites like bit-tech, anandtech, xbitlabs, hardocp and the list can continue.

 

A 965 Phenom II at 3.8ghz bottlenecking a 260? You've got to be kidding!.....Excuse my outburst, but lets just say that I'm more than a bit skeptical. The only way I can foresee there being a "bottleneck" is if you're relying exclusively on the CPU for graphics processing/have the game set at the lowest settings/resolution. Otherwise, it should be the GPU doing most of the work. For instance, here's a review done with a GTX 280.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ack-edition-six-core-processor-review-12.html

Here's another one using a 5850:

http://techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Phenom_II_X4_970/10.html

 

I think this review does a good job of displaying the FPS difference when a game is set a high-settings, in comparison to low settings. At high settings, there is barely a discernible difference in processor performance. The reviewer is utilizing a 5770.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/processors/AMD_Phenom_II_X6_1075T_10.html

Hrere's another example:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-and-x2-560-be-review-aliens-vs-predator.html

And another, which actually utilizes a 260. Notice the FPS at higher res with more details. In L4D2, at the 1600x1200 resolution, the 1090t is only 2 FPS lower than a 980x.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18799/6

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18799/8

As such, I'm not sure how AMD's processors "suck" at gaming, or why someone would run off and buy an Intel processor; unless they're playing at the lowest possible settings, and getting over a 100+ FPS is mandatory.


BTW, the comment section needs an edit button. Heading to the forums is a bit tedious.

 

Exactly. Due to steam deciding it wants to download 800MB of "stuff" before it'll let me play TF2 you've beaten me to it. I'll post in a couple of minutes once I've seen what my Phenom can get out of the game with v-sync turned off. I can pretty much guarantee it'll more than a 50fps average though!!

 

Please do......This is the first time I've heard someone recommend a processor over a video card, and, quite frankly, I'm baffled. I'm thinking he might have had some problems with his old motherboard.

 

maybe but everything else was perfect and CPU benches matches other peoples' results.