AMD Phenom II X6 Conclusion ~ TECH n MAYA...........................................

ACCORDING TOMSHARDWARE
Intel’s Core i7-980X gave us a six-core processor running at the same speed as its predecessor with a shared L3 cache increase to boot—and all at the same price point. Unfortunately, at $1,000, it’s still hard for most folks to get excited about hexa-core computing. If you can afford a grand, great. The -980X remains the fastest desktop processor available, and it sells at the same price as the quad-core -975. Choosing between the two is a no-brainer.
AMD took a different approach, adding cores (and corresponding L1/L2 cache), but leaving the shared L3 at 6MB. The addition of Turbo CORE shoots to emulate what Intel achieves through Turbo Boost, but it’s effectively Cool’n’Quiet in reverse, and arguably not nearly as elegantly implemented. Moreover, a $100 price increase means you’ll be paying more for AMD’s six-core solution.
But the Phenom II X6 1090T costs $285 to the Phenom II X4 965’s $185. This is a six-core CPU most of us can actually afford. The question is: who should spend the extra money?

Four Or Six?
The benchmarks speak volumes in this story. The moves from one to two cores and two to four were each met with slight clock rate drops, conceding to the increased complexity of doubling execution resources. Each step of the way, gamers actually saw better performance from the higher-clocked one- or two-core processors, while the folks using threaded software watched performance spring forward thanks to parallelism.
It might have been a fluke that Intel was able to time its 32 nm die shrink with the launch of its six-core Gulftown, but that was actually the first time I can remember that no compromises were made in increasing core count. AMD doesn’t have that luxury. The addition of low-k dielectric material in the metal layers almost amazingly facilitates a six-core design within AMD’s 125W TDP, but it’s not enough to kick the clocks up another notch.
As a result, it’s easy to recommend the Phenom II X6 1090T for folks able to employ its six cores. Video work, threaded Photoshop filters, rendering—in those workloads, AMD’s new flagship is, in many cases, able to keep up with the quad-core Core i7-975.
In the same vein, the gaming benchmarks are a reminder that the latest and greatest graphics cards really do need a capable processor behind them if you want to unleash their potential. An overclockable CPU like the Core i7-920 or -930 can really open up a Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 480 when you get it up to the 4 GHz range. Dipping down to 3.2 GHz doesn’t really help the 1090T win any battles in the games (Call of Duty excepted, where Turbo CORE seems to improve performance over the X4 965). If you’re a gamer, save the money you’d spend on a six-core CPU, buy your favorite overclockable processor, and spend the difference on graphics or an SSD to cut level load times.
AMD’s hexa-core Phenom II X6 1090T is decidedly a productivity-oriented part designed to improve the performance of threaded apps. It extends the usefulness of Socket AM3 until Bulldozer emerges in 2011. As a result, your 790FX-based motherboard will do the job just fine—it’s probably not worth upgrading to 890FX at this point. Turbo CORE is conceptually a good answer to Turbo Boost, but I had a hard time proving its effectiveness in the real-world. Best-case, it helped the 3.2 GHz 1090T keep pace with the 3.4 GHz 965 in single-threaded titles.
Perhaps the most impressive point from this launch is the fact that AMD is increasing core count by 50%, transistor count by just under 30%, and maintaining the same 125W of its fastest quad-core CPU. It’s almost a shame that price increases by more than 50% at the same time. Fortunately, there are plenty of heavily-threaded workloads that justify a sub-$300 six-core CPU.

ACCORDING TO ANAND TECH
Today's conclusion is no different than what we've been saying about AMD's CPU lineup for several months now. If you're running applications that are well threaded and you're looking to improve performance in them, AMD generally offers you better performance for the same money as Intel. It all boils down to AMD selling you more cores than Intel at the same price point.
Applications like video encoding and offline 3D rendering show the real strengths of the Phenom II X6. And thanks to Turbo Core, you don't give up any performance in less threaded applications compared to a Phenom II X4. The 1090T can easily trump the Core i7 860 and the 1055T can do even better against the Core i5 750.
You start running into problems when you look at lightly threaded applications or mixed workloads that aren't always stressing all six cores. In these situations Intel's quad-core Lynnfield processors (Core i5 700 series and Core i7 800 series) are better buys. They give you better performance in these light or mixed workload scenarios, not to mention lower overall power consumption. The better way to look at it is to ask yourself what sort of machine you're building. If you're building a task specific box that will mostly run heavily threaded applications, AMD will sell you nearly a billion transistors for under $300 and you can't go wrong. If it's a more general purpose machine that you're assembling, Lynnfield seems like a better option.

ACCORDING TO GURU3D

AMD will be AMD -- bringing bang for buck to the table. Seriously .. did anyone expect a six-core CPU that starts at just 199 USD ? That just staggers me, value for money is what AMD is about and their track record is certainly exceeding them with the release of Phenom II X6 CPUs.

Now we have to set things in perspective for several usage segments, let's start of with gaming. Game performance wise the stone cold truth is that Intel has the better overall package in peak performance, even Core i7 quad-core processors will continue to dominate AMD's six-core processors in the high-end gaming segment.

The reality however is that both manufacturers have their own advantages. If you can forfeit on game performance a bit, you'll also save yourself a whole lot of money. But sure, hyper-threading, triple channel memory and just very strong processors do give Core i7 the benefit.

Looking at the X6 series from more professional point of view, say content creation and multi-media transcoding etc then nothing available in the market to date can do what the X6 processors can manage for this kind of money. The Phenom II X6 processor series is just lovin the create, edit, render, encode/decode application on your PC and oozes with value in combo with the X6 processors.

The cheapest 199 USD 1055T is offering you very solid performance, that's 33 USD per core(!) making it the big winner for the budget conscience end-user, AMD is an unmistaken the winner.

Now a lot of you would probably be comparing today's tested processors to the six-core 980 Extreme from Intel, in a way that makes sense both being six-core CPUs, but the reality is simple, the Phenom II X6 processors are not even close performance wise. Even overclocked at 4.1 GHz an AMD Phenom II X6 processors can't beat the 980X at it's default clocks and that's a testimony on how strong the Intel Nehamlem/ Gulftown architecture is. The fact remains that clock for clock, and core for core performance definitely is a win for Intel's Core i7/i5 series, but you pay for it big-time, as simple as that.

So what we are trying to say here is that AMD did it right on many levels. Your operating system will simply be blazingly fast, your games will run fast enough and if you are editing and transcoding some video, pack a lot or RAR files and so on .. that's where the enormous value of the new X6 processors really kick in hard.

What also surprised us was the operating temperatures of the Phenom II X6 processor. We peeked, checked, verified and then again verified again but even under full load with six cores active your temps can be as low as 30 Degrees C (on air cooling), and that definitely baffled us. The overall low temperatures obviously also opens up doorways for overclocking. We quite easily managed to get this 1090T running at 4.1 GHz on all six cores, 100% stable on a cheap OCZ Vendetta cooler. Next to that the TDP of these processors though not low aren't extremely high either, which is very nice to see as well. Overclocked however that's a different story, as the TDP certainly jumps up fast.

So here we have the Phenom II X6 series, overall offering very brawny performance while retaining a very interesting price. I mean if you need to transcode video's cheap and fast, pick up a:

199 USD Phenom II X6 1055T

125 USD 890GX motherboard (integrated graphics)

60 USD 4 GB DDR3 1333

50 USD 500 Watt PSU

50 USD Chassis

69 USD 1 TB HDD

25 USD ODD

Then you just built a fully functional six-core processor based media crunching monster PC at a great price of under 600 USD. Now make no mistake, AMD is not competing with Intel's six-core solutions at all. They can't as performance wise per core they miss out on performance. But if we leave gaming out of the equation and look at content creation, 3D design, video transcoding etc where applications are heavily threaded then the Phenom II X6 1055T performs roughly at the level of a Core i7 860~870 ( 300~550 USD), and the 1090T closes in on the Core i7 950/965 (580/800 USD).

So this is value at its absolute best. But seriously, it's time for AMD to stop following Intel, and start to lead. AMD's processors need some sort of hyper threading embedded and make a move to larger caches and triple, maybe even quad-channel memory configurations. Value for money wise, you can't beat the processors tested today though and as such they are a pleasure to have inside any modern PC. A processor like this will bring a smile to your face.