AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition 3.3GHz CPU Performance Secrets Review

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Processor

Speed bumps, not so great when your cruising on a motorcycle and didn't see it. When it comes to processors they are a great thing. Unless of course you just bought the previous model, then you might be kicking yourself. Haven't we all been there though? Today however, speed bumps are a great thing. AMD is releasing three new processors that have all received speed bumps.

Unlike the speeds of the processors today, which are going up. The prices are not! These processors will be replacing the previous processor in the price line up. The Athlon II X3 455 will maintain the $87.00 msrp of the Athlon II X3 450 and you can find the AMD Athlon II pricing line up here. The Phenom II X2 565 will fall in line at only $112.00. The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition has already knocked the price of the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition to $235.00 while the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition will sit pretty at just $265.00. Prices for the entire AMD Phenom II series here. Today we are getting a faster processor for less money, that's a win-win if you want my opinion.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (HDE00ZFBK6DGR) Specifications:

• Model Number & Core Frequency: X6 1100T / 3.7GHz (Turbo) / 3.3GHz (Base)
• OPN: HDE00ZFBK6DGR
• L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (768KB total L1 per processor)
• List Item 1
• L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (3MB total L2 per processor)
• L3 Cache Size: 6MB (shared)
• Total Cache (L2+L3): 9MB
• Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller
• Memory Controller Speed: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
• Types of Memory Supported: Unregistered DIMMs up to PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz)
• HyperTransport 3.0 Specification: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)
• Total Processor-to-System Bandwidth: Up to 37.3GB/s total bandwidth [Up to 21.3 GB/s memory bandwidth (DDR3-1333) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)] Up to 33.1GB/s total bandwidth [Up to 17.1 GB/s memory bandwidth (DDR2-1066) + 16.0GB/s (HT3)]
• Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
• Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 in Dresden, Germany
• Process Technology: 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
• Approximate Die Size: 346mm2
• Approximate Transistor count: ~904 million
• Max TDP: 125 Watts

Now that we have exposed the secrets of the AMD Phenom II x6 1100T Black Edition processor let's take a look at the "Leo" system that we will be using to torture and test the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T processor! Shortly after that we can get to the fun stuff- the benchmarking!

Test System

All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with all the latest updates installed. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. The Corsair Dominator memory modules were run in double-channel mode at 1600MHz with 8,8,8,24 1T timings. The ATI Radeon HD graphics cards were tested with 10.8 CATALYST suite drivers. The MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard was running the latest V1.6 BIOS. The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T processor was running at the default clock of 3.3GHz with turbo enabled.

AMD Test Bench
Processor	AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
Motherboard	MSI 890FXA-GD70
Memory	Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 2x2Gb
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 640gb
Video Card	HIS Radeon HD5870
CPU cooler	ThermalTake SpinQ VT
Chassis	None - Open Bench
Power Supply	Corsair TX750

SiSoftware Sandra 2010c

The Sisoft Sandra 2010 benchmark utility was released a few weeks ago and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. Sandra 2010 now comes with support for Virtualization (Virtual PC/Server, Hyper-V, VMware) and GPGPU (OpenCL, DirectX 11 Compute Shader/DirectCompute). Today we will be utilizing Sandra 2010 to look at memory bandwidth performance!


Benchmark Results: The memory bandwidth of the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T BE slightly outperforms the Phenom II X6 1075T in Float Buff'd bandwidth, though it fell behind the 1075T when running the int buff'd test. The Intel Core I7 930 has significantly higher memory bandwidth thanks to running a triple channel memory configuration, though we have to keep in mind a system based around the Intel X58 chipset does tend to cost more to build.

The Sandra Processor Multi-Media benchmark has been a long time favorite of ours to look at floating point performance on processors.

Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T BE easily dominated the field in the Sandra 2010 multi-media processor benchmark. The int X16 iSSE4.1 test was 10% faster than the Phenom II X6 1075T and 51.6% faster than the Intel Core I7 930! The gap between the Intel Core I7 930 and the Phenom II X6 1100T BE was closer during the Float x8 iSSE2 and the Double x4 iSSE2, though the Phenom II X6 1100T BE was still on top by nearly 24%!

x264 HD Video Encoding

Simply put, it is a reproducible measure of how fast your machine can encode a short HD-quality video clip into a high quality x264 video file. It's nice because everyone running it will use the same video clip and software. The video encoder (x264.exe) reports a fairly accurate internal benchmark (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encode and it also uses multi-core processors very efficiently. All these factors make this an ideal benchmark to compare different processors and systems to each other.


Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Processor was 5.6% faster during the first pass of the x264 HD video benchmark than the previous leader the Phenom II X6 1075T. During the second pass which is much more processor intensive, the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition was able to increase the performance gap to nearly 9%!

Cinebench R11.5 

MAXON recently released CINEBENCH Release 11.5, an advanced hardware testing suite that assesses a computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on the same powerful technology as MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. The new version of CINEBENCH includes the ability to more accurately test the industry’s latest hardware, including systems with up to 64 processor threads, and the testing environment better reflects the expectations of today’s production demands. A more streamlined interface makes testing systems and reading results incredibly straight forward. Again, higher Frames/Second and point score equal better performance.


Benchmark Results: Once again we have the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T on the top of the charts with a commanding lead of 9% in the multi-core test and 5.7% in the single core test!

PCMark Vantage

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.



Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II 1100T Black Edition was able to edge out the AMD Phenom II X6 1075T albeit less than 75 points overall. Most of the test suites in PCMark Vantage were very comparable and within a few points either way. The communication suite saw a gain of nearly 900 PCMarks. The communications suite tests use data compression and a faster processor like the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition will certainly help there.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware. 3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft. 

Performance settings were used, so a 1280x1024 resolution was used.


Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T had an overall score that was ~700 3DMarks faster than the Phenom II X6 1075T. The CPU score however, had a 1508 3DMarks or 9.7% faster performance in the 3DMark Vantage CPU tests.

wPrime

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.

Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II X6 1was 23.457 seconds or 8.5% faster than the AMD Phenom II X6 1075T and nearly 19% faster than the Intel Core I7 930!

Colin McRae: DiRT2

Benchmark Results: Interestingly, we lost a couple of frames per second at 1280x1024 with the faster AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition. Though at higher resolutions we saw a slight performance gain and the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition had the highest performance of any of the processors.

Aliens Vs. Predator Benchmark v1.03

We cranked up all the image quality settings in the benchmark to the highest level possible, so we were running 4x AA and 16x AF with SSAO enabled at both 1920x1200 and 1280x1024 on all the video cards.


Benchmark Results: Aliens Vs. Predator is without a doubt, a very graphically demanding game. The three AMD Hex-Cores are all neck and neck with each other with only 1.1 (2.4%) frames per second separating them at 1280x1024 and only .2 frames per second at 1920x1080.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Benchmark Results: The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition was ~4% faster than the AMD Phenom X6 1075T at both resolutions in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Call of Pripyat.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Since Futuremark is releasing 3DMark11 today we decided to run the benchmark at both performance and extreme presets to see how our hardware will run.

Benchmark results: The Intel Core I7 930 was able to outperform the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition by 4.8% in the performance preset. The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T black Edition processor was able to close the gap to 1.8% when running the extreme preset.

Power Consumption

The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition draws a peak 18 Watts more than the Phenom II X6 1075T does under a full load and at idle. This could be from the speed bump or just the plain fact that every processor is just a bit different. Let's face it though, if you are buying the biggest, fastest processor from AMD I doubt that power consumption is your biggest concern.

Overclocking the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Processor

Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Always remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so our results will differ from what you might be able to get.


With stock BIOS settings, the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition processor runs with a 200MHz bus speed (base clock) and an x16.5 multiplier that is used to reach the final core clock of 3.0GHz when all the cores are at full load. Being that the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T is a Black Edition processor we have the ability to raise the multiplier above and beyond the x16.5 that we begin with.


Firing up the MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard into the BIOS I started to increase the multiplier little by little. After a short time I was able to increase the multiplier up to x21 for a stable overclock of 4.2GHz!

Not wanting to leave it at just increasing the multiplier, I wanted to increase the bus speed as well to try and squeeze every last MHz out of the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T black Edition that I could. After some time and alot of trial and error (a little rusty with Black Edition Processors) I was able to increase the bus speed and additional 5MHz which would give us 105MHz on the clock speed (21 multiplier x 5MHz) for a final stable overclock of 4305MHz which is a solid 1GHz+ overclock. I would call that a successful overclocking session.

Firing up wPrime we can see that each setting was stable with a full load across all six cores. wPrime also allows us to see the performance gains from each overclock. Overall we were able to knock off nearly 60 seconds or 23.7% of the total time from the 1024 million test. Not a bad bit of "free performance"!

Unlocking Cores - Secrets

Phenom II X6 1100T is a Hexa-core processor. There are no cores to unlock b/c of no disabled core.

Conclusion

 

If you are looking to build a hex-core sysem that will run all the latest heavily threaded applications, the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition processor will easily run anything you can throw at it!

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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T vs Core i7 930 vs Phenom II x6 107T vs Phenom II x6 1055T vs Phenom II x4 910e vs Athlon II x4 640,benchmark score, comparison, multicore, Instruction sets sse3 sse4a, desktop, north bridge hyper transport, power management, Gaming Overclocking.