Lets take a look at AMD’s 6 core CPU the Phenom II 1055T. An enthusiast chip at an affordable price!
Product on Review: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Processor
Manufacturer and Sponsor: AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
Street Price:
Here’s a little about the company:
Over the course of AMD’s four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate — always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.
However, “technology for technology’s sake” is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that’s truly useful for customers — putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that “customers should come first, at every stage of a company’s activities.”
Over the course of AMD’s four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate — always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.
However, “technology for technology’s sake” is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that’s truly useful for customers — putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that “customers should come first, at every stage of a company’s activities.”
My previous reviews of both the Phenom II 555 Black Edition and Athlon II 440 showed that AMD have successfully produced a capable and affordable range of CPU’s for enthusiasts of all types.
Right in the top echelon of performance sit their Hex cores – the Black Edition 1090T which boasts an unlocked multiplier and a stock speed of 3.2GHz, the 1075T at 3GHz and the ‘affordable’ 1055T which runs at 2.8GHz.
We have the 1055T here for testing so it’ll be interesting to see how it performs compared to its more affordable downcored brothers and sisters.
Specifications
Compared to previous Phenom and Athlon review samples the 1055T specification is quite beefed up!
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Hex Core Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX – 2.80GHz, Socket AM3, 3MB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache, 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) FSB, Retail, Processor with Fan
• 2.8GHz
• Turbo Core feature clocks three or fewer cores to 3.3GHz
• Socket AM3 and AM2+ (938-pin) compatibility
• 6 processing threads
• 3 MB of L2 cache (512KB per core)
• 6 MB of L3 cache
• 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) FSB
• Dual channel DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller
• 45nm process
• 125w TDP
• 2.8GHz
• Turbo Core feature clocks three or fewer cores to 3.3GHz
• Socket AM3 and AM2+ (938-pin) compatibility
• 6 processing threads
• 3 MB of L2 cache (512KB per core)
• 6 MB of L3 cache
• 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) FSB
• Dual channel DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller
• 45nm process
• 125w TDP
HyperTransport™ Technology HyperTransport™ Technology up to 4000MT/s full duplex, or up to 16.0GB/s I/O Bandwidth
Type of Memory Supported Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500(DDR2-1066MHz) and PC3 10600 (DDR3-1333MHz)
Turbo Core Technology Dynamically transfers performance to three dedicated cores operating at a higher frequency
The chip
The Phenom II 1055T uses AMD’s ‘Thuban’ core – a 45nm design offering the full cache levels you’d expect in a Phenom CPU.
The Phenom II 1055T.
As with all of AMD’s recent AM3 chips the 1055T works with both AM3 and AM2+ motherboards due to its identical socket layout and inbuilt DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers.
Socket 938.
The chip supports full hardware virtualization allowing virtual machine environments to be run that function with the relevant hardware.
Setup, clocking and temps
Test setup
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair IV Extreme and ECS A885GM-A2
RAM: 4gb OCZ 1333MHz PC3-10666 C9 DDR3
HDD: 160gb WD 7200rpm SATA HDD
Optical drive: LG Bluray/HDDVD Multidrive
CPU cooler: Coolermaster Hyper TX3
PSU: Nexus RX-8500 850w
Overclocking
I initially used the ECS A885GM-A2 to try and clock the 1055T – although I did manage to push the chip to 3.2GHz this was where I stopped with this board. It simply would not allow any higher regardless of voltage, multiplier or FSB adjustment.
1055T @ 3.2GHz.
Disappointing since I knew the average 1055T should go to 3.5GHz fairly comfortably.
Fortunately hope arrived in the form of ASUS’ Crosshair IV Extreme. Probably one of the top AM3 boards and certainly something I would expect to clock the pants off the 1055T.
The Crosshair immediately returned a 700MHz overclock pushing the chip to 3.52GHz. A voltage boost (roughly 0.1v) and FSB increase were all that was needed. I also reduced the multi from 14x to 13x since many 1055T users find they respond better to higher FSB at lower multipliers.
3.52GHz.
Pushing on I was able to fiddle with some of the additional chipset voltage controls and increase both the multiplier and FSB to get the processor to 3.86GHz. An additional 0.06v was all that was needed to push it up to this level.
3.86GHz.
A 1GHz overclock is certainly an achievement… especially when you consider that this overclock is on a very affordable low range heatsink.
Temperature
Temperatures at stock were very good and remained so even under mild clocking but the Hyper TX3 could not keep up with the hex core at full tilt and under full OCCT stress burn tests. During normal usage temperatures were certainly never an issue.
Temperatures.
PCMark05 and SuperPi
A selection of desktop based hardware tests including Futuremark’s PCMark05, SuperPi, Cinebench and the x264 HD benchmark.
PCMark05 up first measuring general desktop performance with a scattering of graphical tests for completeness.
PCMark05.
As you can see at stock clocks the 1055T does admirably against the Intel competition. Both of the Phenoms do well in this regard. Once clocked the Intels pull into a slight lead but a decent result none the less.
SuperPi is next and illustrates the benefits brought by increases in CPU and memory speeds.
SuperPi.
As seen in previous AMD reviews core count makes virtually no impact on results. Here the core speed of the CPU is what counts and the results pretty much follow the pattern ‘increased clockspeed = lower time’.
Cinebench and x264 HD
Cinebench utilises multiple cores to render a scene and then scores the result based on the speed with which the process is completed.
Cinebench.
In this regard the Phenom II 1055T really shows the available computing power it can deliver. Even at stock speeds it happily outperforms the overclocked and fully unlocked 555. Once overclocked it simply surges further ahead.
x264 is the final desktop style benchmark used to test the CPU. It’s a High Definition video encoding benchmark that once again benefits from both additional processing cores and overclocking too.
x264 HD.
The results here are not quite as marked as those from Cinebench but it still shows an identical trend. The stock 1055T outperforms the 4GHz quad core 555 and beats it by a margin once overclocked.
3DMark06 and Vantage
We now move on to graphical performance – first up we take a look at actual benchmark software in the form of both 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage. This is another benchmarking program from Futuremark but this time looks exclusively at the gaming performance of the PC it’s assessing.
First up is 3DMark06 running at its standard 1280×1024 setting. Lower resolution is better in CPU benchmarking as it allows us to more easily identify any performance limitations introduced by low CPU speed or limited core count. Having data from a couple of other Phenom II models allows us to see this more clearly.
3DMark06.
As you can see the additional cores allow the stock 1055T @ 2.8GHz to beat both the overclocked 720 tri core and the stock ‘quad unlocked’ 555 running at 3.2GHz. Once overclocked the 1055T pulls ahead although the 555 unlocked to quad core and overclocked to 4GHz does a good job of keeping close.
Something else to note is the difference in points score between the stock 1055T in the Crosshair IV Extreme and the ECS.
For Vantage I had much more information to go on since I’d used for my Intel motherboard testing a while back.
Vantage.
Here we can see the strengths of the Intel chips. Even at stock speeds which ‘clock for clock’ are much lower than the 555 which tries to level peg. The low score of the 1055T at stock speed was not present when testing with the ECS. Indeed the stock ECS score with the 1055T actually matched the overclocked score of the 1055T in the Extreme. Judging by the similarity of scores (and past experience with the program) Vantage scores seem more GPU dependant than CPU. As in the Crosshair IV Extreme review – add another GTX and the scores are bumped almost two fold.
Blacksite and Dead Space
Now we have the first of our game tests. AMD’s Phenom II’s (and to some extent their budget Athlon II’s) are well documented as performing well from a gaming point of view so let’s see how those extra two cores do with Blacksite.
Blacksite.
The 1055T does indeed perform well. Indeed, once clocked the minimum framerate (the most important as far as I’m concerned) at every tested resolution either matches or gets very close to the average framerate count recorded at stock speed. Even at 1920 with every setting on high gameplay was butter smooth and stutter free. Looking to previous reviews the bump in performance certainly goes in line with the additional available cores.
Dead Space the survival horror game is a useful test for a system and seems to scale well with CPU, GPU and resolution changes.
Dead Space.
Once again the 1055T doesn’t disappoint with good numbers across the board as regards playability. I would say though that with the 1055T there’s virtually no reason to overclock to glean additional performance at higher resolutions with this game. Average and Minimum framerates at 1680 and 1920 are virtually identical despite that 1000MHz overclock.
Far Cry 2 and Unreal Tournament III
Second to last is Far Cry 2. As you know by now this is a particularly useful game to test with since the game comes with its own built in benchmarking program.
Far Cry 2.
Additional performance is available from the overclock on the 1055T however the numbers don’t look that massive. That said – @ 1920×1200 the 3fps difference in the minimum framerate may be the difference between playable or not. The numbers are very similar to those I recorded with the 555 unlocked to quad.
Last but not least is Unreal Tournament III which also boasts a downloadable benchmark program although it only returns the average FPS rather than minimum and maximum.
Unreal Tournament III.
The 1055T at stock and the two lower resolution returns figures similar to those offered by the quad unlocked 555. Once overclocked the 1055T surges well ahead. At 1920×1200 the results show the stock 1055T behind the stock 555 (quad) but once overclocked the deficit is pulled back and both return virtually identical framerates.
Conclusion
Well there you have it. AMD have provided another excellent processor for the price conscious enthusiast.
I’d certainly recommend a decent motherboard if you wanted to heavily clock the 1055T as the ECS I initially used certainly didn’t seem to like it at anything over 400MHz beyond stock.
The AMD Phenom II 1055T.
Gaming performance certainly goes in line with the many second generation Phenom and Athlons I’ve had the pleasure of testing. I would say though that for the majority of gaming situations an overclocked quad core may well be sufficient for the near future.
General desktop performance is definitely more than comparable to the i5 and i7 quad core competition from Intel. Those extra cores do provide the additional grunt that help encoding and rendering to complete faster.
All in all it’s been a very impressive chip. It clocks well in a suitably competent motherboard, run’s particularly cool at stock clock speeds, doesn’t cost much at all and provides very respectable performance. Add the Turbo Core feature that temporarily boosts CPU speeds when three or fewer cores are in use and also the fact that it is a hex core CPU and you have the ingredients for a very nice chip.
Pros
+ Impressive overclocking performance (with the right motherboard)
+ Smooth windows and gaming performance
+ Cool running at stock clocks (needs a decent’ish’ heatsink if clocked and overvolted)
+ Well priced (an Intel Hex core will cost around £700)
+ Great backwards compatibility with DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller
Cons
– Not quite as friendly/easy to clock (seems somewhat motherboard specific)
+ Impressive overclocking performance (with the right motherboard)
+ Smooth windows and gaming performance
+ Cool running at stock clocks (needs a decent’ish’ heatsink if clocked and overvolted)
+ Well priced (an Intel Hex core will cost around £700)
+ Great backwards compatibility with DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller
Cons
– Not quite as friendly/easy to clock (seems somewhat motherboard specific)
The Phenom II 1055T is a little marvel of modern technology. Six cores all crammed into one chip and for such an affordable price too. Even competing Black Edition Phenom II quad cores (965 and 970) are either similarly priced or more. Yes they have unlocked multipliers (and in the case of the 970 ‘might’ be a deactivated hex core – gamble in itself) but if you have the right motherboard you’ll be able to clock the 1055T close to what they can manage and all the while have an additional couple of cores at your disposal!
The AMD Phenom II 1055T hex core receives our coveted Gold award – congratulations!
