AMD launches the Phenom II X6 Sexa Core CPU, We take it for a spin

Life for AMD has been very interesting. Last year they were upside down in debt, losing money almost every quarter and putting out CPUs that, while cheaper than their Intel counterparts, could not perform on par with Intel’s current generation CPUs. They had some bright areas though, notably in the GPU arena. Here they have the vaunted 5000 series GPUs that are probably the best you can get in terms of price and performance.  However, today we may just see a game changer from AMD. Today marks the launch of the Phenom II X6. This is a $300 Sexa Core CPU that is capable of running on AMD’s 800 and 700 series chipset. That is right you can drop this on an AM2+ or AM3 socket for a very inexpensive upgrade [with a BIOS upgrade and as long as the board can support 125 Watt CPUs]. The question everyone wants to know is; will the Phenom II X6 have the power to keep up with Intel’s current generation… We aim to find out.

What’s new?
Not surprisingly, the Phenom II X6 is not a completely new CPU. It is an extension of the Phenom II line with a few nice features thrown in. One of the things that has hurt many-cored CPUs in the market has been a lack of performance gain when dealing with non-SMP [Symmetric Multi-Processing] aware applications. To put it bluntly, if the CPU cannot use more than one CPU there is no gain at all. Furthermore the more non-SMP applications that you run the more they all try to take up residence on CPU 0. This makes the whole system slow down despite the large number of cores or CPUs in it. Intel solved this with a Turbo Mode feature that increases the speed of individual cores based on the application need.

Well AMD has joined in and has thrown something similar into the X6. This is going to be called Turbo CORE.
Turbo CORE is not like the Turbo Mode found on Intel CPUs though. Instead of overclocking different number of cores by a specific multiplier, AMD pushes three cores to higher speeds. This boost can be as much as 500MHz.

But for the most part, other than the increase in die size to account for the extra cache and cores there is not much new under the hood.

Overclocking and 6 cores
When we tested the Core i7 980X we found that we could get pretty decent results with that CPU. This was despite the fact that it was ‘out of order’ for core progression.  The Phenom II X6 was not as easy. This had the same type of issue that we have seen in other AMD CPUs.  While we were able to get some impressive speeds [including up to 4.3GHz] we could not get them stable. We also found that the lower thermal threshold was an issue. We could not pump as much voltage as we would with an Intel CPU.  After all the average Intel CPU has a T-Max of 100c while the AMD Phenom II X6 had on of 62c. In the end to make it through all of our tests we ended up using a bus of 248MHz and a multiplier of 16. We stuck with a voltage of 1.42 for Vcore to keep the temperatures under the threshold. We hope to tinker around more with this CPU to see if we can squeeze some more out of it, but without more advanced cooling we have our doubts about how much farther we can push it.

Test System and Comments
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Mainboard Asus Crosshair IV Formula [Supplied by Asus]
Memory: 4GB Kingston KHX1600C9D3T1K3/6GX [Supplied by Kingston]
Hard Disk: Kingston SSD Now M [Intel X25-M 80GB SSD] [Supplied by Kingston]
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 5870 [Supplied by AMD]
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 [with an extra fan] [Supplied by Cooler Master]
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Drivers: Catalyst 10.3

Comments :
Other than the issues we had with the temperature during our overclocking we did not encounter any issues running the Phenom II X6. It was a smooth installation; the system installed and did not miss a beat.

Synthetics:
For our performance testing we like to have a combination of synthetic and real-world testing.  For Synthetics we have the usual bank of tests from FutureMark, Maxon, Sisoft, and HyperPi.

Memory Bandwidth:
We have decided to throw this one in to illustrate a point. At one point in time AMD was the undisputed king of memory bandwidth. There was just no other CPU that could manage the same memory performance that AMD could. Then, starting with the AM2 series something seemed to have changed. AMD dropped from being the king to just on par with Intel. Once the Phenom came out that difference was even more obvious. Now, with Phenom II we still see that type of poor memory bandwidth. This can only hurt the PII X6 as now there are six CPU cores that will be begging for work to do.

FutureMark:
PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage is a suite of tests designed to give an easily reproducible result. It is also often used for bragging rights. The suite combines some of the most common PC tasks into an easy to use format.

The Phenom II X6 [from this point forward we will call it the PII X6] did not do terrible here. I would have liked to see a better showing but unfortunately we are not seeing that here. It was able to outrun Intel’s quad core i5 750, but not by much.

3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is the second in the twin tests from FutureMark. This one turns to gaming. It is one of the first tests to use DX10 for the rendering loops. We also see the first full-scale usage of PhysX in a gaming test. As we have moved to using the HD 5870 in our testing the scores shown are all without GPU accelerated PhysX.

Cinebench R11.5
This test from Maxon improves threading efficiency [up to 64 threads]  over the older R10 and also includes some advanced rendering techniques to keep the CPU working hard. CB R11.5 also includes a revamped OpenGL test for GPU performance.

HyperPi 0.99
HyperPi is a great test to find out how well a CPU can handle large amounts of math based information. With HyperPi you have a single instance of SuperPi Mod 1.3 running on each logical and physical core. This puts a great deal of stress on the CPU and also on the internal memory controller.

Unfortunately we see one of the major issues with AMD CPUs. They have a problem when you load up each core with complex instructions. Here we see the load of six 32M SuperPi runs is just too much for the PII X6. This is partially because of the poor memory performance that we saw above and also because of way the cache is designed inside of the CPU. Thankfully, there are very few times when you will actually see this type of load in the real world.

Photoshop CS4:
Photoshop is an industry standard image manipulation application. It is great for not only editing photographs but also for creating original content. For out testing here we used the Driverheaven Photoshop script. This is a custom built action that puts a stock image through a series of filters and allows you to record the time each takes to run.

Real World:
LightWave 3D 9.6 x64
Our first real world test is LightWave 3D. This is an industry standard 3D Animation and rendering software from Newtek. Our rendering tests with LightWave 9.6 have changed. I have always been a fan of the Classic Camera and the multi-pass PLD anti-aliasing that it offered. However, what I did not know was that this type of camera model was only capable of about 75-80% CPU utilization. This makes it very inefficient [as I am sure you guessed] so we made the shift to the newer perspective camera and are using its much better [100% CPU utilization] threaded engine as well as a newer and more efficient form of anti-aliasing. Along with this new camera model we get ray tracing and some other nice features. We have also leapt from the 1080p resolutions we used before and are now setup with a 35mm 4k resolution of 4096 x 3072; this should give the CPU a nice workout. To show off the vast difference in performance between the two we ran both and show you the render times here. This also shows what you can do when your application is truly written for a multi-threaded CPU.

AutoGK 2.55:
AutoGK is a compilation of transcoding applications wrapped up into a very nice installer and front end application. It is a great ‘one-stop’ for transcoding or even re-encoding files. For our testing we transcode a 2-hour movie at 100% quality and record the time it takes to complete.

Gaming:
Gaming is a very real-world test. We do not use benchmarking scripts but actually play the games though a pre-planned level and record the frame rates using FRAPS. This allows up to see exactly how the CPU benefits [or hinders] performance. We have moved to a new format and will now be bringing you a game of each of the three common Direct X Levels. This should give a broader idea of CPU performance across multiple gaming APIs.

Modern Warfare 2 DX9
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a fast paced first person shooter style game. It covers the gamut of modern ‘low intensity’ and covert style combat that is actually going on in today’s world. Yes the plot line is far fetched, but some of the actual types of missions are not far from the mark. As it is a console port it is limited to DX9 for its engine. However, due to the massive ‘bar fight’ AI it can be a good test for a CPU.

FarCry 2 DX10
FarcCry 2 is a large “sandbox” style game that does not have any real levels. It is all mission based but allows for a great deal of free movement in the environment. You take the role of a mercenary sent to kill “The Jackal” a dangerous gun runner. Unfortunately you are overcome by your malaria and end up serving as an errand boy for a local thug.

Battlefield Bad Company 2
This title from EA also is our first DX11 First Person Shooter. It is a game that is heavily multi-player oriented, but also has a short single player game. In that game you take the part of a World War II commando infiltrating a small island to recover a Japanese defector for the first level, after that things get more modern; unfortunately the pace does not pick up.

Gaming recap
As we have mentioned time and time again, the CPU is no longer a big player in how well your games perform. This has moved to the GPU. However, this brings an interesting thought to mind. AMD has claimed that the AMD platform is the best for gaming. I am not sure where they are coming from with that. After all we see that an AMD CPU combined with an AMD GPU and Chipset do not always mean that performance is going to be good. I think what AMD might be trying to say is that the AMD platform might be the most cost effective for gaming. You can get more for your money by getting an AMD system Vs and Intel system if all you are doing is gaming.

Value:
According to what we are hearing, the AMD Phenom II X6 will hit the stores for under $300. This is not a bad price at all for a six core CPU. Of course there is the issue that Intel’s Core i5 750 comes close to the X6’s performance for about $100 less.  I suppose that the X6 will be a good value for someone that already owns an AMD system with an AM2+ or AM3 board. Here is where you will benefit the most as you can drop the new CPU in after a simple BIOS upgrade [if one is available and as long as the board can support 125 Watt CPUs] and be off and running.

Conclusion:
I was a little disappointed with the PII X6. I was hoping for a lot more than I saw. I am not saying this is not a good CPU. Considering what AMD has been putting out this is a great step in the right direction. I think that AMD is really moving forward and has finally caught up to [and even passed] some of Intel’s current generation CPUs. This will finally allow AMD system owners to drop in a CPU that can really do some work for them.

On the overclocking side you will want something better than air-cooling if you are really going to push your new X6 CPU. We found that you really cannot push the X6 too far without jacking up the voltage. Once we did that, we started to see the CPU overheat.

All in all I have to say that AMD has made a CPU that I like [finally]. They still have a ways to go, but the Phenom II X6 shows they are willing to make the effort and push out better performing products at good prices. We hope to see more CPUs like this from AMD in the near future and are looking forward to testing out the new 890FX chipset that was launched alongside the new PII X6.

Original Author: Sean Kalinich

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