AMD launches Phenom II

Today, 8 January 2009, AMD launch their new Phenom II CPU.

Pricing

A local AMD representative said that the 940 Black Edition is expected to retail locally at around R3500, undercutting Intel’s entry level i7 920.

These prices put Phenom II just bellow Intel’s cheapest i7 CPU.

Can Phenom challenge i7?

In November 2008 Intel launched their new Core i7 CPU. The votes are in and the overwhelming consensus is that i7 is simply the fastest consumer CPU solution available today.

However, the added speed comes at a high price, with the entry level i7 920 costing R4000.

Furthermore, you will be pressed to find a compatible X58 motherboard for less than R3500. There is also the requirement of expensive DDR3 RAM to take into consideration. The fact that i7 requires the replacement of three major parts of the PC makes for an inelegant upgrade path.

Enter AMD’s new Phenom II along with its Dragon platform.

While it’s no secret that AMD has been playing catch up ever since Intel began dominating the performance charts in 2006 with Dual Core, the manner in which Phenom II matches up to i7 in terms of pricing and performance should be interesting.

AMD’s previous attempt at a unifying platform combining their CPU, chipset and graphics card, codenamed “Spider” was based on the original Phenom and ATI Radeon 3800. To be frank, the platform wasn’t anything special.

So why might Dragon be different?

Dragon combines the new Phenom II with the AMD 790GX chipset and Radeon HD 4800 graphics line.

Firstly, the Radeon HD 4800 series is a huge improvement over the HD3800, so already “Dragon” is looking a lot more promising than “Spider”.

Secondly, early information indicates that the Phenom II will offer significantly better performance than its predecessor. The new 45 nm die shrink will allow the Phenom II to compete more closely with Intel in terms of energy and heat efficiency as well as overall performance.

Already, the Phenom II has been reported to over-clock beyond 4GHz on air, a far-cry from the original Phenom’s comparatively limited over-clocking headroom.

Phenom II will feature up to 8MB of total Cache, balanced between L2 and L3 and more instructions per clock (IPC), effectively enabling more performance squeeze out of the relative clock speeds.

Furthermore, AMD have allowed for a backwards compatible upgrade path. The Phenom II will happily run on the current AM2+ platform. This makes it an attractive upgrade to current Phenom owners using AM2+. In contrast, those looking to upgrade to Intel’s latest will have to buy an expensive new motherboard and DDR3 RAM.

It seems unlikely that Phenom II will be as fast as i7. However, it may not need to. If it can get close enough to i7 in terms of performance, then the fact that it is a cheaper and easier upgrade solution could end up making it a more practical option.

AMD’s approach to Phenom II could not be better. Instead of trying to compete with Intel in terms of raw performance, they are following on from their Radeon HD4800 strategy by aiming for the best price-performance ratio.

Time will tell if Phenom II offers enough of a performance boost to seriously compete with i7.