"The final piece of the 45nm puzzle for AMD is a pair of low-power Phenom II processors also introduced last week. The Phenom II X4 905e ticks away at 2.5GHz, has 6MB of L3 cache, is rated for a 65W TDP, and will set you back $195"

not so much of a problem, but I'd prefer to scan the data in tabular format. Thanks!

wow, the X2 550 is amazing.

AMD has to release dual cores with faster clock speeds to stay ahead of the competition not just by disabling two cores on a quad core processor. and hey what is the idea of introducing Ci7 975 extreme when its barely 0.2 mhz faster than Ci7 965 extreme? dosent make much diference though. the core i7's biggest enemy are their hefty price tags and only people with really big budget would pick them up. many would prefer processors with best price/performance ratio. as for amd they should try to bring out their bulldozer processors as soon as possible. at this rate when intel will introduce lynnfield then every thing is over for AMD.

Some Chinese website stole your review

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=6296&pageid=4664

What a waste of time and money it was to R&D that new native dual core. Even worse perf/clock than Phenom, even with double-sized L2s. Hopefully it's at least saving them serious money on chip manufacturing costs... That certainly seems to be the only gain here.

hey the power efficiency shows intel's q9400/8400 is more efficient than q9550!!?? how come thats possible?? i dont understand!

Nice review. I'd like to see an article solely on the Athlon X2 250. I kind of wish this chip to be AMD's "Celeron Mendocino"...as in...the cheap CPU that packs as much punch as the big boys.

On a second note...I understand that AMD and Intel have a very complicated legal relationship where they have some kind of cross-licensing agreements that allowed Intel to include 64-bit mode in its CPU lineup. Now, why can't AMD include that Hyper-Threading nifty trick that Intel has where a dual-core can supervize 4 "physical threads"? Is there a way to completely disable the HyperThreading mechanism in Intel's chip and put them against AMD in a core-for-core battle? That'll be interesting.

I love overviews of new chips compared to older ones. It is a nice way to keep up with what is available, even if I don't have a good excuse to build a new system.

One thing that is often overlooked when comparing processors is virtual extensions. All things being equal (or close), I go for the chip with virtual extensions. This is one area where AMD has been a leader. They include virtual extensions in almost every processor, while Intel has always held them back in the lower price ranges. Now that AMD is closer to Intel in performance and tdp, virtual extensions could be the tipping point.

Now that MS is talking about virtual XP in W7 as a way to entice XP users. having virtual extensions could be plus. My understanding of the E6300 is that it was supposed to fill that hole for Intel.

I have been using Linux for years. I used to keep a dual boot system with XP on it. For the past two years or so I have only used XP in a virtual machine for the occasional legacy application. This is why I run a Q6600 instead of a Q8200 in my current system. I am always on the lookout for cheap/low power quad processors with virtual extensions. I went Intel with the last build anticipating cheaper 45nm processors with virtual extensions, but they have not obliged so far. Maybe I'll go AMD next time.

What about the E7600? This is a 3.06GHz Core2 CPU with 3MB L2 cache, SSE 4.1 and VT
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLGTD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115059&Tpk... (ignore the inflated initial price - it should level off around $130 in the next couple of weeks)

Also, I don't quite agree with the comment "We unfortunately don't have an E7400 on hand for testing, but it should be only slightly quicker than the Pentium E6300".
Outside of the L2 cache size that would have some moderate impact depending on the test, the E6300 has VT, but the E7400 does not. And the E7400 has SSE4.1 and the E6300 does not.
Those can be significant differences depending on the test.
- The E6300 can run the XP mode on Windows 7 Professional but the E7400 cannot.
- The SSE4.1 of the E7400 can provide a noticeable boost in some application.

Small typo:
"Each remaining core has 512MB of L2 cache"

512kB, no?

Q9550 Price Drop?

I could swear that when I check it yesterday is was $270, today it is $230. Now the X4-955 don't look quite as attractive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041

you get a chipset that beats the pants out of an Intel chipset

Eh? I'd like to hear an explanation of this, how exactly does a 790FX+SB750 'beat the pants out of' an x58/P45+ICH10?

The Nero Test should be excluded. My how that company has fallen hard in making quality software.

I'm disappointed in the Athlon II's power consumption. I guess having four power states and no L3 cache didn't really do anything.

It'll be interesting to see how VT will factor into the Value equation once W7 comes out properly. Although the Q8400 has it also according to Intel's website.

Aaaahh, Scott

Your overclocking skills leave a lot to be desired.
An E8400 E0 can run at 8*500 = 4GHZ with a mere v1.272, stable, on air cooling (others have managed it with less), 24/7. Would it outperform an i920 at those settings?
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17884182&page=31

My bandwidth exceeds 10GB/s, with some decent memory, at that speed.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=136355&page=4

Perhaps an article should be made about the detailed BIOS options that can allow such a high OC with such low voltage and the subsequent special value the Core 2 Duo's have to offer for gamers.

Kinda whack that your idle power consumption figures are so high. I have an e8500 on an ASUS P5B Deluxe with three SATA Drives, a Blu ray Drive, xi-fi, 4G RAM, W7, 64-bit and my idle is a good 40-50 W less than your test platform. You mention that it is after cinebench has run, but even after I run benches it goes right back down to 87-95W.

I use my APC Back UPS 1500VA realtime data to test, and I turn off my my monitors and other equipment as well.

Having used the pentium E2160 and the C2D E7200, I long to go back to AMD and its super fast memory controller. Problem with tests is that the testing software generally takes over the system and pummels it with data along predictable lines.
I feel that the Core 2 line's FSB is way behind AMD's Hypertransport, and the FSB frequently chokes even the dual cores when operating more than one program which load the memory sub system.
Along that line, the AMD 250 and 550 should be unbeatable options, especially since AMD and nVidia chipsets are way better than Intel chipsets in the graphics dep't (can't say about the disk controller issue- maybe AMD used seagate's 'cuda 11 series for testing).
But hate to say that even a fortnight after the new AMD chips have been reviewed, they are not to be seen on Newegg. Are they paper launches? I thought that AMD left that behind.

this review is amazing... so complete, so informative, and still easy to read..

great work scott.

One suspects, though, that with a better disk controller, the Phenoms and Athlons would put in a better showing. Perhaps this would be a good subject of a mini-review in the future. Stick something like an Adaptec 2258100-R or other PCIe controller card into an Intel system and then into an AMD system, and see how the disk performance results compare to the exact same systems using the on-board disk controllers.

Damage...the platform cost thing under the value proposition page seems a little arbitrary. I think people recycle KB, mice, HDD's, optical drives, etc. But even if they buy new, I don't think the gfx card should be included in the value proposition as it is a sizable chunk of money for a good one, compared to other components. For a value comparison, I'd only put in:

Board
CPU
Memory

Because CPU/board type dictates which type of memory to use, etc. that seems OK. And with DDR3 being competitive, an upgrader will likely take the plunge. Even though I've built Intel, AMD would look even better value-wise looking at the Board/CPU/Memory $$$.

I have gotten to the point where the CPU indeed doesn't matter as much for home use..
.. where I WOULD like a much faster & multi-core CPU is at work.

At home I generally have one or two apps running at a time.. at work it's 5 or 6 on average and my poor work PC cant handle it well.

got more static? .. seems that way lately.

I for one welcome summer weather.

Scott Wasson, i don't understand you!
In every single AMD review you mention that the problem is the AMD disk controller but in every single review you keep using a motherboard with an AMD chipset. WHY? Is someone forcing you to do this?
Last time i checked, you can still buy nVidia based AMD motherboards.
Why do you let a weak southbridge cloud people's judgment over a CPU purchase? Please avoid AMD chipsets for reviews until AMD releases SB800.

because the extra cache isn't worth the extra cash
I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

I am newly impressed with the x4-955. For the most part, when the disk controller is not in the way, the x4-955 meets or beats the q9550 and it draws less power at both idle and load, and it costs less. And it's an unlocked CPU. Dam, that ain't bad at all.

Waiting for a competitive AMD south bridge is very tiresome. Bring it already. Anyone know when that this is going to hit the market?

November/December should be exciting for me, that is when I plan to do a new build and it will either be an x4-955 or a i5 Lynnfield i7.

The X2 550 and X3 720 are both extremely attractive processors. Great performance PLUS you have a friendlier upgrade path. I just couldn't see justifying a Core 2 build of any sort right now unless you strongly favored some of the non-gaming benchmarks. Even then... I think the upgrade path would sway me. Phenom II or Core i7, a very split market.

So, basically, as long as your processor is Core2 or Phenom2, it is pretty much fast enough.

The x4-955 and the q9550 look like not such bad values either, IMO.

Thanks for the hard work Wasson.

Just figured I'd throw this out there since the Gigabyte DES utility was mentioned. I've been messing around with it on my WHS box and it does provide notable power draw savings even over a CPU with voltage tweaked to one step in BIOS above the minimum needed for very good stability (Linpack, 24 hour P95 small FFT and blend.) Idle draw was reduced by ~5W and load by ~15W with the power saving options in DES all set to best including level 3 voltage setting. One weird thing about the utility is that it defaults to 'CPU throttling - Off' which results in almost no power savings at load. Changing that setting drops the load draw by ~15W and also drps CPU temps by ~4C. What's even more interesting about that is the voltage reported by CPU-Z doesn't change appreciably so there must be some pretty good efficiency tricks going on in the mobo CPU voltage supply section.

It's a neat utility and will make me look toward Gigabyte boards first in the future.

While its looking like the i7 is going to be the performance leader until the next die shrink, I can only wonder about the future of the lga 1366 socket with Lynnfield just around the corner.

Rumors seem to point to the fact that a Lynnfield chip, clocked reasonably, would meet or out do the lower end i7 models, thanks to some tricks on Intel's part. Combined with cheaper motherboards and dual channel RAM, I could see how such a chip could steal some market share from the i7.

Is Intel really positioning 1366 to house only the $300+ chips?