Socket AM3 Arrives -- AMD Releases Five New CPUs that Support DDR3

Posted 02/09/2009 at 11:00am | by Gordon Mah Ung

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We can’t touch on this CPU launch without tackling the big question: DDR3.

And you can’t tackle DDR3 without openly wondering why the hell is AMD so slow in adopting new memory standards? We find this to be especially ironic because it was AMD that made DDR what it is today.

Years ago, Intel decided that a fast, serialized, memory standard would benefit PCs. The solution to this was Rambus’ Direct RDRAM memory. Intel bet it all on RDRAM and restricted the Pentium 4’s chipsets to Direct RDRAM only. The problem is the RAM maker’s didn’t want RDRAM due to the licensing fees that they would have to pay Rambus. But what could they do if Intel made the CPUs and chipsets for it?

AMD saw it’s opening and led memory makers in a mutiny against Intel by supporting DDR with Athlon. The mutiny was successful, Direct RDRAM was tossed under the bus and Intel embraced DDR with a bear hug. Although we now believe the industry and the media (including Maximum PC) made a mistake by not moving to Direct RDRAM, or at least, something similar to it, DDR was the standard.

So how the hell did AMD turn from the darling of the memory industry into a perceived drag ass? DDR2 was adopted by Intel two years before AMD introduced AM2. And Intel’s DDR3 chipset has been around since late 2007.

We’ve long had a pet theory that moving the memory controller into the CPU has taken some flexibility out of memory choices. The original Athlon 64 was hard wired to only run DDR. Likewise, AM2 Athlon 64s and Phenoms could only run DDR2. AMD’s solution to supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 is to build a memory controller that supports both types of RAM into the AM3 procs.

AMD’s official explanation for its seemingly slow memory updates is that it only adopts new memory standards when its cost effective and when people actually want it. Hence, even with AM3, the company is still pooh poohing DDR3. AMD says it still believes the vast majority would rather have the cost savings of DDR2 over DDR3.

DDR2’s cost performance over DDR3 isn’t what it once was though. A year ago, 2GB of DDR3 would fetch several hundred dollars. Today, you can buy 4GB of Crucial DDR3/1066 for $79. Change your selection to 4GB of Crucial DDR2/800 and it would cost you $38. So DDR2 does cost 100 percent more, but we’re talking 80 bucks here folks for 4GB of RAM.

Finally there’s price.

AMD’s pricing on its CPUs has been a great deal for consumers. It is a bit confusing though. At first glance, you’d think it was 22 CPUs spread out in a price band from $225 to $101. But two of those chips are OEM only. Another four are aimed at servers and media center PCs and another four are for business desktops.

Performance

How we tested

We used an MSI DKA790GX board outfitted with 4GB of Patriot DDR2/1066, a PC Power and Cooling 1200 Watt PSU, a GeForce 8800GTX and 150GB WD Raptor drive to test the three AMD procs. As a comparison, we used a 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550 in a Gigabyte GA-X48-GQ6 with 4GB of DDR3/1333 with a WD Raptor 150 and GeForce 8800GTX. For the Core i7-920, we used an Intel DX58SO with 3GB of DDR3/1066, GeForce 8800GTX and WD Raptor 150 drive. All configurations used Windows Vista Home Premium in 64-bit flavor.

The results were mostly what we expected. Performance against its sibling, the 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 was what you would think a CPU with 400MHz fewer clock cycles would score. We did see some unexpected results though. The AM3 Phenom II X4 810 part slightly outscored the Phenom II X4 940 in several of the memory benchmarks. We didn’t expect this given that we were running it in the same board with the same RAM and with same RAM speeds and timing set. This is either a hiccup in our test or an errant setting from our earlier test of the 940. We unfortunately didn’t have time to go back and rerun our tests with the 940. It is also possible that AMD has taken the extra few months it had with the newer AM3 parts to tweak the memory controller.

Between the Intel and AMD chips there was no comparison but that’s no surprise. AMD doesn’t expect the 810 to take on the 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550. Instead, AMD believes the CPU is better matched against the budget 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q8200 part. The $163 Q8200 has 2MB less L2 cache than the Q9550 and runs about 500MHz slower. We didn’t have Intel’s ultra budget part handy to test but subtract 500MHz from the Q9550’s scores and take away a small bit for the cache and both parts are likely competitive with each other.

The $284 Core i7-920, of course, is the fastest of the bunch but it’s also more expensive to buy and build a machine around.
Realistically, this comes down to Phenom II vs. Core 2. There, it’s a competitive crowd as Intel has as many or more CPUs than AMD does. There is only one advantage an AMD builder would have over an Intel machine: future upgrades.

Intel is pretty set to push the superior performing Core i7 as the platform of the future and is unlikely to spend the money and engineering to say, qualify a 3.5GHz CPU for the Core 2 platform. AMD, on the other hand, is committed to AM3 for now. That means it’s possible we’ll see a 3.4GHz or 3.6GHz Phenom II down the road. And even if that chip comes out in AM3 the backwards compatibility with AM2+ means those people won’t get left behind either.

While Core 2 Quad certainly has some legs left in it, those with an eye towards future upgrades should look to Core i7 if they want performance. And if they just want a good performing budget chip, AMD’s Phenom II is actually looking like a more stable platform over Core 2 right now. We’re not at all saying that Core 2 is dead, especially since in many ways, it still far outperforms all of AMD’s CPUs, but in six or nine months, Core 2 will feel stale as only Core i7 and Phenom II will get performance upgrades.