Game settings were manually controlled for the DUT.
Amd k10 benchmark drivers#
NVIDIA 376.33 drivers were used for benchmarking. CPU TESTING METHODOLOGY GAME TEST METHODOLOGY This has interesting implications for overclocking: a primary reason for limited-core boosting is to keep temperatures and voltages within acceptable limits, but we have a modern Kraken X62 strapped to our bench, helping bypass thermal constraints. There were higher frequency Phenom II X4 processors around at launch, but the major advantages of the X6s were the higher core count and the reintroduction of Turbo Core technology, the now-familiar ability of a CPU to boost its frequency on a limited number of cores (three, in this case) while limiting others. Even Black Edition CPUs aren’t necessarily “better,” but they do have an unlocked multiplier, making the process of overclocking much simpler. The naming convention is simply higher number = faster, and T simply stands for Thuban. That may seem like a lot of variety, but there’s barely any difference in specs outside of base/boost frequency, and a different TDP in the case of the two 1055T SKUs. Throughout 2010, both faster and slower X6 processors were introduced: 1035T, 1045T, a different 1055T SKU, 1065T, 1075T, and the top-of-the-line 1100T Black Edition. There’s always speculation about higher core counts paying off in the future, and that’s what we’re interested in testing with this revisit: the longevity of the Phenom II X6s, as we saw the advantages held by the 2600K over the 2500K in our last revisit. At launch, a cheap hex-core CPU would have been a huge boon in production but largely irrelevant to older games limited to four threads in modern games it could actually help, as it does with the 6C/12T 1600X in Watch_Dogs 2 and AOTS.
Price/performance isn’t really relevant to a part that can’t be purchased new, but Phenom II X6s do have six cores and a reputation for overclocking. Newegg may no longer be selling them new, but the ratings on the old product pages give a hint as to why they’ve held value: 90% of the 758 reviews for the 1055T and 91% of the 1,680 reviews for the 1090T are 5 eggs.Īnand Shimpi himself wrote a sort-of-maybe-positive review, which is a great indication of how they compared to Intel’s quad cores in 2010: better at production, worse at lightly threaded applications, i.e.
The 1055T may not have increased in price by 35% like the G.Skill 2x4GB kit that we bought with it, but it is still going for $60-70 used, and the 1090T purchased for this review was $100. The 1090T was $295 and the 1055T was $199, but by December of 2011 (post-Bulldozer) it had dropped to $150 on Newegg, which is when we bought the 1055T sample used in this review. Two Phenom II X6 CPUs launched in April of 2010: the 1090T (Black Edition) and the 1055T, which are the samples we’ll be revisiting. These benchmarks look at AMD Phenom II performance in gaming and production workloads for the modern era, including comparisons to the equal-aged Sandy Bridge CPUs, modern Ryzen 5 & 7 CPUs, and modern Intel CPUs. Given that we’ve already looked at Intel’s 1Q11 offerings, we decided to revisit AMD’s Phenom II CPUs in 2017, including the Phenom II X6 1090T (Black Edition) and Phenom II X6 1055T. Later that year, AMD’s underwhelming Bulldozer architecture would launch and inevitably replace the Phenom line. We came away from our revisit of the once-king Sandy Bridge 2600K and 2500K CPUs impressed by the staying power of products that came out in Q1 2011, considering Intel’s unimpressive gains since that time.Īt the time of Sandy Bridge’s release, AMD’s flagship CPUs were 45nm K10-based Phenom IIs, designed to compete in price/performance with the 45nm Lynnfield (Nehalem i5) quad cores.