AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Review - PAGE 1

AMD goes one step further with its Thuban die. The flagship Phenom II X6 processor now runs at a nice 3.3GHz; still keeping its 125W thermal envelope, the hexa-core runs 100MHz faster. That is a full 3.3GHz on all six cores, or 3.7GHz across three of them when Turbo Core is activated. That is only 200MHz slower than the quad-core die  in the form of the Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition.

Two other interesting subjects launching today are the Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition, a 3.4GHz unlocked dual-core, and the Athlon II X3 455, a 3.3GHz tri-core. However, only the hexa-core will be analyzed today.

So how will the X6 1100T Black Edition perform? Theoretically, it should score one notch further than its predecessor. Will it be better at overclocking, though? If one remembers the article on the latest Deneb, an optimization of the manufacturing process allowed for almost 200MHz more clock speed to squeezed out. However, according to the information written on the heatspreader, there is nothing new with today's subject, as both it and its predecessor are labeled as "ACBBE":

Specifications:

Pricing

As in all recent reviews of AMD products, it is pertinent to make a price comparison table of the current processor offerings. One should consider that motherboards featuring the AM3 socket can be had for much cheaper than their Intel counterparts though, thus increasing the price difference even more. 

The first thing that one will notice is that the Phenom II X6 processors are now much cheaper than at launch. The 1090T can now be had for $229 instead of the original $295. The new X6 1100T, at $265, competes against the cheapest Nehalem quad-cores in the form of the Intel Core i7-950 and i7-870.  In fact, Intel does not offer any quad-cores based on its latest architecture below a steep $280! That means the cheaper Phenom II X6s and X4s get to go head-to-head with the i5s. It is true that these dual-cores offer a better performance per core, but as soon as the application can exploit many threads, they bite the dust.

In the lower end spectrum of the table, one will notice that the Athlons are now much faster than at the beginning; it looks like the X4 620 up to the X4 630 got phased out, leaving the 2.9GHz X4 635 at the $99 price mark. As for the dual cores, the Athlon II X2 240 isn't available anymore. Since a long time, it just did not make sense to go with a Pentium or Core 2 CPU.