AMD Phenom II X6 1090T

The Phenom II X6 1090T is the first AMD processor to be widely available that houses six cores.  And if that wasn't enough of a leap forward in itself, the six cores are not the only new arrival to the range, because AMD has also added its Turbo Core technology.

Like the Turbo mode on Intel's CPUs, it allows some cores to run faster when not all of them are in use at once.  From its basic frequency of 3.2 GHz, the Phenom II X6 1090T can step up to 3.6 GHz if you only use three of its six cores.  It's a very handy capability as it allows you to speed things up in apps that aren't optimised for multi-core processors.

Energy Consumption

When it isn't working hard, the processor doesn't use that much more energy than the Phenom II X4 965.  We measured a consumption of 137 W for our whole computer, compared to the 130 W needed by the 965.  Intel's six-core CPU, the Core i7 980X, required 141 W.

We were even more pleasantly surprised when we ramped things up, because at 223 W, the consumption for our whole computer was again comparable to the X4 965.  The i7 980X caused a spike of 255 W in the same conditions.  Our rating of two stars in this section is very harsh because of how high these figures are, but we're glad to see how reasonable these figures are compared to quad-core CPUs.

Performance: Applications

We can only draw one conclusion from our test results: the Phenom II X6 1090T can't match the Intel Core i7 980X on any measure.  The latter is quite simply the faster of the two, and has yet to be beaten.  On the other hand, the two extra cores have allowed AMD to make up some of the ground lost to the Core i7 800 series.  If you consider our overall average scores, the 1090T is more or less equivalent to an Intel Core i7 860 and just below an 870.


We found that the discrepancy varied according to the apps that we were using.  AMD's CPU was very good at encoding x264 HD video, and finished our test file in 3 minutes 32 seconds.  The i7 870 took 3 m 58 s to do the same job.  The tables were turned when we tried compressing files with WinRAR.  For that, the Phenom II took 4 m 4 s, while the Core i7 needed just 3 m 7 s.

On average, the X6 is just a little more than 10% faster than its predecessor, the Phenom II X4 965, which only has four cores but which runs at 3.4 GHz with no Turbo Core.

Performance: Games

There still aren't that many games that can take advantage of multi-core processors, so having six separate units doesn't make that much of a difference when gaming.  Our results are just as we'd expect: the 1090T performs at the same level as the Phenom II X4 965, edging slightly ahead in World in Conflict, where it reached a framerate of 50 fps instead of 47 fps.  AMD's first six-core CPU is absolutely at home with games, even if all six cores don't actually get used.
 

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