AMD Phenom II X4 810 Review & Overclocking - PAGE 1

Recently AMD sent us two new Phenom II's to review: the Phenom II X4 810 (that we are reviewing now), and the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (the review of which will be ready tomorrow.) AMD suggested that we could compare the Phenom II X4 810 against the Core 2 Quad Q8200, as it was selling for a similar price to what AMD intended to sell the X4 810.

The first thought that occured to me was that AMD is getting its confidence back - they are willing to be compared to a Penryn!

In the past, we have covered the launch of previous Phenom X4's - the Barcelona based Phenom X4 9600, Phenom X4 9900, Phenom 9600 Black Edition, Phenom X4 9950, and recently, the Deneb based Phenom II X4 920 & 940 Black Edition.

Before Deneb, it simply was not realistic to compare the Phenom's to Penryn based Core 2 Quads, the performance delta was just too large. They were still decent upgrades to Athlon X2 based systems - and we loved that capability - but Penryns were in a class by themselves.

With the introduction of the Phenom II's, AMD was finally able to get into roughly Penryn level of performance - mind you, the Penryns still had superior integer performance due to being able to issue and execute one more integer instruction per clock cycle, but the FPU's were comparable. The Phenom II X4 940 performed quite well, and overclocked incredibly well compared to previous Phenoms.

Today, AMD is introducing new, more value oriented, Phenom II processors:

• $175 AMD Phenom™ II X4 810 @ 2.6GHz with 4MB of L3 cache
• $145 AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition @ 2.8GHz with 6MB of L3 cache
• $125 AMD Phenom™ II X3 710 @ 2.6GHz with 6MB of L3 cache
• $n/a  AMD Phenom™ II X4 910 @ 2.6GHz with 6MB of L3 cache (Available in tray only)
• $n/a  AMD Phenom™ II X4 805 @ 2.5GHz with 4MB of L3 cache (Available in tray only)

Currently prices from the AMD price page are:

• $225 AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black edition @ 3.0GHz with 6MB of L3 cache ($229 at newegg)
• $195 AMD Phenom II X4 920 @ 2.8GHz with 6MB of L3 cache ($189 at newegg)
• $122 AMD Phenom X3 8750 @ 2.4GHz with 2MB of L3 cache ($119 at newegg)

Now I don't know about you, but to me it looks like the price for the Phenom II X4 810 will drop even before it is available; I expect it to sell for less than the Phenom II X4 920 as it is 200MHz slower and with 2MB less L3 cache... I'm guessing it will sell around $165 when it shows up at e-tailers.

Okay, great, the prices seem reasonable -- but how does it perform?