AMD Phenom II

I

ienjoyedit

New Member
So I've seen lots of different speeds for the AMD Phenom II Quad-Core CPU. Now, are they all the same processor? I know the fastest two (the 3.2 and 3.4 GHz) are, but is the 3.0 and even the 2.8 also the same (underclocked) processor? I'm going to get one of these, and I would like to save myself some bank without sacrificing performance.

Thanks for the help.
 
Yeah, they are basically the same processor. The only difference between them iirc is, as you said, the clockrates differ. You can overclock the slower clockrate processors to match the higher ones, and essentially you have the same processor, however you may have a higher overclocking potential with the higher clocked phenom IIs.
 
I say go with the Phenom II 945 Quad-Core 95 Watt Processor. It is only 400 megahertz slower than the Phenom II 965 and consumes 30 Watts less per hour.
 
Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason some are clocked higher than others because certain grades of silicon are needed to produce a CPU clocked at a higher speed, with the same power consumption (and likewise, heat output) as the same core design clocked lower?
 
Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason some are clocked higher than others because certain grades of silicon are needed to produce a CPU clocked at a higher speed, with the same power consumption (and likewise, heat output) as the same core design clocked lower?
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It does have truth to it, but often the chip is capable of speeds far higher than it's rated; this is simply marketing, low-clocked chips are sold cheaper and high-clocked chips for more money. Some goes for number of cores/other features.

On topic: IIRC Athlons have no L3 cache, that being a big difference. I've gathered the performance hit is around ~10% tops, but I haven't really been following the CPU situation as of late. Anyway, in any real-world apps the difference is negligible; you'd most likely only be able to actually tell the difference in heavy rendering and other crunching apps, in which case you'd better off looking at something like an i7.

EDIT: Never mind the stuff I said about the Athlon... I thought I was replying to another thread.
 
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hackapelite said:
It does have truth to it, but often the chip is capable of speeds far higher than it's rated; this is simply marketing, low-clocked chips are sold cheaper and high-clocked chips for more money. Some goes for number of cores/other features.

On topic: IIRC Athlons have no L3 cache, that being a big difference. I've gathered the performance hit is around ~10% tops, but I haven't really been following the CPU situation as of late. Anyway, in any real-world apps the difference is negligible; you'd most likely only be able to actually tell the difference in heavy rendering and other crunching apps, in which case you'd better off looking at something like an i7.

EDIT: Never mind the stuff I said about the Athlon... I thought I was replying to another thread.
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But when you overclock a CPU, doesn't it always increase the wattage applied to it? This would entail that to run it at a higher speed, it would need more power, right? Sorry if I sound like a n00b, I really don't have much CPU overclocking experience, only video cards. :o
 
It all goes. A Phenom II X4 wafer is made, they will have yield rates on the cores all over on each wafer, some with defects. The better yield cores get to be a 955/965, the rest gets eat up for supply and demand on lower end models.

As the yield rates gets better the lowerend models will clock better.
 
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hackapelite said:
On topic: IIRC Athlons have no L3 cache, that being a big difference. I've gathered the performance hit is around ~10% tops, but I haven't really been following the CPU situation as of late. Anyway, in any real-world apps the difference is negligible; you'd most likely only be able to actually tell the difference in heavy rendering and other crunching apps, in which case you'd better off looking at something like an i7.

EDIT: Never mind the stuff I said about the Athlon... I thought I was replying to another thread.
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Cache is necessary with gaming mostly, and the athlon's take close to a 20% hit in performance when it comes to games compared to a Phenom II.

OP's question has been answered, no big deal.
 
StrangleHold said:
It all goes. A Phenom II X4 wafer is made, they will have yield rates on the cores all over on each wafer, some with defects. The better yield cores get to be a 955/965, the rest gets eat up for supply and demand on lower end models.

As the yield rates gets better the lowerend models will clock better.
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So is that why newer steppings will OC better?
Just a quick question: when I go to the extreme outervision PSU calculator, when you clock the CPU higher, it always raises the wattage needed by a good amount of watts per GHz without even raising the voltage. Is this wattage not reflected in heat output?
 
spynoodle said:
So is that why newer steppings will OC better?
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Really alll depends on what was tweaked with the new stepping. But in general it seems to happen. Some can be just bug fixes and like memory controller tweaks or added features. Like the C3 stepping was a pretty big overhaul. Lowered leakage, memory controller work better support of higher mhz and fixed the 4 slot bug, added C1E, probably other stuff.

spynoodle said:
Just a quick question: when I go to the extreme outervision PSU calculator, when you clock the CPU higher, it always raises the wattage needed by a good amount of watts per GHz without even raising the voltage. Is this wattage not reflected in heat output?
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Yeah in general, the faster it goes the more watts it needs and generates more heat. But raising the volts generates more heat.
 
StrangleHold said:
Really alll depends on what was tweaked with the new stepping. But in general it seems to happen. Some can be just bug fixes and like memory controller tweaks or added features. Like the C3 stepping was a pretty big overhaul. Lowered leakage, memory controller work better support of higher mhz and fixed the 4 slot bug, added C1E, probably other stuff.



Yeah in general, the faster it goes the more watts it needs and generates more heat. But raising the volts generates more heat.
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That's what I thought: so in general, a lower end CPU will produce a bit more heat when OC'd to the clock speed of a higher cpu of the same core type, but usually newer steppings of a certain CPU will consume less power and produce less heat at the higher clock speeds.
 
spynoodle said:
That's what I thought: so in general, a lower end CPU will produce a bit more heat when OC'd to the clock speed of a higher cpu of the same core type, but usually newer steppings of a certain CPU will consume less power and produce less heat at the higher clock speeds.
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Right. Like a Phenom II 945 in general wont clock as high as a 955/965. Leakage has alot to do with it too. Say you have a 945 with low leakage rated at 95W, the leakage factor will hamper a high voltage overclock because it cant take as much voltage. Like a 965 will high leakage can take more voltage but with the added heat of bleed off.
 
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