AMD Phenom II X6

Hot on the heels of the Core i7 980X – the six-core CPU unleashed a couple of months ago from Intel, and which will set you back the thick end of two thousand bucks – AMD has released its first six-core desktop CPUs: the Phenom II X6 1090T and 1055T.

The new chips run at 3.2GHz and 2.8GHz respectively, or up to 3.6GHz and 3.3GHz in Turbo mode (that’s what the “T” stands for in the model name). Aside from Turbo mode and the extra two cores, AMD hasn’t really changed anything from the quad-core Phenom II X4 range. Each core still has 512KB of L2 cache (lightning fast memory built right into the CPU itself) making for a total of 3MB, and L3 cache (slightly slower onboard memory) stays at 6MB. Rated power usage has also remained at 125W.

The good news for AMD users is that you can use these chips in all existing AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with a BIOS update. The downside to this is that you’re still limited to a dual-channel memory controller as opposed to the three channels granted to Intel’s Core i7 range of CPUs. That said, in my experience very few applications can take advantage of that third channel so this shouldn’t matter to most folks. Buying two sticks of RAM instead of three will save you a few dollars too.



The real drawcard when comparing these AMD chips to those from Intel is the price. Currently, the NZ RRPs of the 1090T and 1055T are $469 and $321, which set them squarely up against the Intel Core i7 920 and Core i5 750, which are almost identically priced. At roughly $1,600 the six-core Core i7 980X is so far out of the pricing ballpark that it seems unfair to even compare the two chips, but we had one lying around from last month’s review so we included it in the performance stats for comparison.

Cinebench, the first benchmark, grants a score to the CPU based on how fast it can render a complex 3D image (higher being better), first by using just a single core and then by using as many as the CPU has to offer.
The x264 encode test simply encodes raw video into the high definition x264 format. The second pass does a much better job at keeping the image quality up and thus takes more CPU oomph, plus it can make more use of extra cores or threads.

Lastly, the 3D Mark Vantage test puts the CPUs through two intense tests – one with heavy AI simulations and one with heavy physics calculations.

Overall, the two AMD Phenom X6 CPUs generally keep up and often even beat out the similarly-priced Intel quad cores. Remember, though, that these tests, all except the single CPU Cinebench run are designed to make use of multiple cores.

For more everyday tasks such as office productivity applications and even light gaming, you probably wouldn’t see as much difference between a four-core and six-core CPU. But hey, they’re relatively cheap, so if you have even a single use for six cores, the Phenom II X6 chips present great value.