Conclusion

Thanks to a larger L3 cache and IPC tweaks integrated into the architecture, Phenom II delivered on average roughly 4-8% more performance than Phenom on a clock-for-clock basis for the most part in our testing. In some apps it’s a little less, and others a little more. The biggest addition for enthusiasts is definitely Phenom II’s new 45-nm manufacturing process.

The new process allows AMD to scale to dramatically higher clock frequencies than Phenom. Launch speeds top out at 3.0GHz, and we managed to OC our CPU over 3.7GHz! Getting Phenom 9950 to 3.0GHz wasn’t impossible without ACC (last year we managed 3.05GHz with our chip), but you needed a little bit of luck and good cooling. With Phenom II a 400MHz OC is nothing; a few lucky souls may even be able to hit 3.8 or 3.9GHz with the best air cooling.

When compared to Intel’s Penryn line of CPUs, the closest direct competitor to the Phenom II 940 Black Edition is Intel’s Q9400. Here the Phenom II trades wins with the Intel CPU, with each processor winning tests in our suite of benchmarks, but the Q9400 runs faster overall. It’s a much closer fight than where AMD sat a year ago however, but considering this, AMD may want to shave a little off the top of the Phenom II 940’s price. $250 looks about right in our opinion (Intel’s Q9400 officially lists for $266, making it $9 cheaper than the Phenom II 940 as of right now). AMD could then reestablish the $275 price tag when DDR3-based AM3 arrives. It should run a little faster than today’s AM2-based 940 CPU, and should be able to push ahead of the Q9400 in a couple of the closer benchmarks.

Honestly though variety is probably our biggest disappointment with today’s launch. As good as the AM2-based Phenom II CPUs are, we wish AMD offered more variety in the Phenom II lineup right now. A 2.6GHz sub-$200 SKU would be awesome for the gamer on a budget, while a high performance range of Phenom II models with 1MB of L2 cache per core and a really large 12MB L3 could probably take on Intel’s $300+ Penryn processors. On the other hand though considering today’s economy, AMD is probably taking the right approach by focusing on the $100-$300 mainstream sweet spot of the market.

In summary Phenom II isn’t going to blow away the CPU world like Conroe Core 2 did in 2006, but just as the Phenom 9850 and 9950 Black Edition CPUs gave AMD a very competent competitor to Core 2 Quad Q6600, Phenom II 940 and 920 give AMD a serious challenger to low-end quad-core Penryn CPUs like the Q9400. We’re not getting a next-generation performance leap over Phenom just yet, but thanks to its higher clock speeds and larger cache Phenom II is a significant improvement over Phenom 9950 and will get even sweeter when AMD moves to DDR3 and AM3. The frequency scaling is also good. AMD hasn’t quite caught up to Intel in this department, but they have narrowed the gap significantly with Phenom II.

We’re a little surprised Intel has chosen not to respond to Phenom II just yet. If they don’t watch out, AMD could win back some of the enthusiasts who may have planned to go Intel with their next upgrade. AMD’s certainly got the more stable platform in terms of providing a solid upgrade path; AM2+ and AM3 CPUs are interchangeable with both platforms. With Nehalem eventually relying on two different sockets, and LGA775 finally coming to an end, AMD’s platform roadmap is definitely more stable.

But will this be enough for AMD to win back lost market share? That’s a question that will be interesting to follow over the course of the next 12 months…