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Before we head into our result testing of the AMD X6 1100T Black Edition we felt it was important to get baseline results from a couple of processors.
Firstly we selected the Phenom II X6 1055T – the bargain, value for money 6 core processor that has sold exceptionally well for AMD in 2010. In the past we showed you how to get a 900mhz overclock from this CPU with minimal effort, so it makes for a great value for money purchase, especially for people on a budget, but who need multiple processing power for rendering and encoding. This CPU is selling right now for £150 inc vat, meaning it really is still one of the best bargains out there. This is also the processor that many AMD performance based system owners might have today, and they are wondering if that upgrade to a 1100T is worth the money. Today we aim to find out.
We are classing this as our upgrade scenario.
Secondly, we selected the Intel Core i7 950 processor, the replacement for the Core i7 920 of yesterday (still a great purchase if you can find one online). The i7 950 sells for slightly more than the 1100T Black Edition – generally around the £250 inc vat mark. While this CPU has only four physical cores when compared to the X6 1110T's six, it does utilise Intel's Hyperthreading technology, so you end up with another four virtual cores, for a total of eight.
We are classing this as our competitor scenario.
In this review we also throw in some Intel Core i7 970 performance results. Hardly a fair match, considering you could buy three 1100T's for the price of a single Core i7 970, but we want to set out and try to ascertain a real world value for money factor. But more on that later.
We are classing this as the ‘money no limits' comparison scenario.
While we could use a variety of testing today, we settled on a total of five suites, to give a good cross section of overall processing power.
Test One:
SiSoftware Sandra is a great indication of potential performance levels, we are going to take results from the Arithmetic, Multimedia and Cryptography benchmarks. We particularly like the Crypography test as it is major part of computing. Certain processes can prove slower than others, depending on their algorithms. User passwords on your home PC are encrypted, as are user passwords on web servers. Past that, cryptography is used in other areas as well, such as with creating of unbreakable locks on files or assigning a hash to a particular file (like MD5).
In Sandra's Cryptography test, the results are outputted as MB/s, higher being better. The higher the number, the faster the CPU processes through the respective algorithm.
Test Two:
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit is a particular favourite of ours, as it is a borderline ‘synthetic' application. Certainly it is a scripted benchmark, however it is based on the fantastic CINEMA 4D rendering engine, which is used by many studios and production companies worldwide for 3D content creation. You might not know, but this software was used in the creation of movies such as Star Wars, Spider man and the Chronicles Of Narnia.
Test Three:
Video Encoding: Cyberlink Media Espresso 6. We love this program at Kitguru, not only is it a great indication of how fast a processor can handle video encoding, but it also now supports video card acceleration. This means you can see just how much time you are saving if you get your graphics card to support the processor. Today we are disabling the graphics card element of the encoding process, to focus completely on the AMD and Intel Solutions.
Test Four:
Rendering: 3D Studio Max 2011. This is another professional level software package that offers uses integrated 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing capabilities. It delivers differentiated experiences and specialized toolsets for game developers, visual effects artists, and graphic designers on the one hand, and architects, designers, engineers, and visualization specialists on the other. We render a customised Kitguru scene at 3000×2500 and record the time taken, lower is better.
Test Five:
PC Mark Vantage. This PC benchmark suite is designed for Windows and offers one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.
bloody hell, nice overclock man. that is a cracker processor.
Love the cinema4d information, i use an older quad core for rendering a lot and this seems like my next upgrade. price point is better than I thought. I remember the 1090t was 250 when it came out.
Like the idea of a review/OC guide. I never know how the fuck to overclock my chips. the 1055T guide you did helped me alot.
Id love to say ill get this for my upgrade, but its a bad time of the year, maybe in the new year.
Love it. well done.
Nice overclock. I only managed to get 500mhz out of my 1055T which was pretty poor. Good to get your views on voltage also, not many ocing guidelines on that and hard to know from forums who is talking out of their ass and who is right.
OCUK are selling this for £225 inc vat? thats a deal and a half, just ordered one.
Ive been holding off on a new platform for ages. Im a multiple core fan, I bought the first core quad eons ago and havent upgraded since. Might look into this in the new year when I have some spare cash to burn.
I agree this is one of the best looking AMD chips yet, the overclocking potential seems high. that noctua NH D14 cooler is insane however, covers the motherboard basically !! not exactly easy to work around it.
unusual review style, but I like the overclocking guide concept. My friend used the 1055T guide here months ago and it helped him. headroom seems higher on this chip, but I think it might be a hand picked review sample? possible ?
If you arent overclocking then its not worth the premium over the 1090t. pointless really. I hope this review sample is a good indication of headroom. I watercool and I got the 1090T to 4.3ghz easy enough with 1.65 volts. potential for 4.5ghz here.
I like this editorial. its a boring release so getting the max from air cooling is a nice way to differentiate the test results. Seems to be a good purchase, but its hard to fault for the price. its a strength of AMD’s releases in the last year. aim for the lowest point possible and max the cores.