Greetings fellow gamers, and PC hardware enthusiasts. I recently got my hands on a brand new AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor and would like to give you the run down on these now 6 core processors from AMD.
These new 45 nanometer processors are monsters on power requirements at a whopping 125 watts, but you shouldn't expect anything less from AMD as their processors generally do require more power then their Intel counterparts. The new X6 series is AMD's attempts at competing with AMD's i5 quad core processors as well as lower end i7 CPU's and for what you pay, you are getting a fairly powerful CPU. With the X6 series, AMD introduces their counter to Intel's Turbo Boost technology with their new Turbo Core functionality. Turbo Core reclocks your processor to a higher speed, disables 3 of the 6 available cores and provides the 6MB of L3 cache across 3 cores at 2MB each instead of 1MB each across 6 cores. The base clock speed for the 1055T is 2.8 Ghz while the Black Edition 1066T is 3.2Ghz. Unfortunately due to not having a proper cooling setup to do overclocking, I cannot give you much opinion on how well these processors overclock, however initial tests I have read on other websites is that these can clock to 4.5Ghz on air no problem with the Black Edition 1066T.
I am running this at stock speeds due to not being able to overclock with my current cooling conditions but I am running an ATI Radeon HD5770 graphics card and 4GB of memory on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and I have yet to see a single hiccup with the 1055T model. The stock AMD cooler isn't the greatest, but it works fine for what I have been doing thus far. Playing games like Crysis while listening to music, creating ISO's, downloading and encoding high quality video at the same time seems to run pretty smoothly so it certainly can multitask with ease. And for the 210 Canadian dollars I paid for it, the value is excellent. If you are looking for a processor that will help you multitask without breaking the bank and can let you run games. These run best on the new AMD 890GX chipsets, I purchased a Gigabyte motherboard with USB 3.0 and SATA 3 6Gb connectors on it for future proofing and I don't think I will need to replace this processor for a long time, even at stock speeds it allows you to do so much without causing slow downs on your system. Windows 7 boots in about 45 seconds to the log in screen, pretty much every modern game boots and runs extremely well even with a lower end graphics card installed in my computer.
If you are looking to do a build on a budget that will allow you to multitask, the AMD Phenom II X6's are certainly worth looking into as they are highly versatile. They may not have the same amount of raw power as Intel's i7 processors, but for what they are charging for an i7, you can buy yourself a better graphics card or more memory and still get an excellent processor. The biggest downside that AMD has had with their multicore hardware is the lack of cache which is really where Intel is superior, if AMD improved that part of their processors, they would be walking over Intel easily.
These new 45 nanometer processors are monsters on power requirements at a whopping 125 watts, but you shouldn't expect anything less from AMD as their processors generally do require more power then their Intel counterparts. The new X6 series is AMD's attempts at competing with AMD's i5 quad core processors as well as lower end i7 CPU's and for what you pay, you are getting a fairly powerful CPU. With the X6 series, AMD introduces their counter to Intel's Turbo Boost technology with their new Turbo Core functionality. Turbo Core reclocks your processor to a higher speed, disables 3 of the 6 available cores and provides the 6MB of L3 cache across 3 cores at 2MB each instead of 1MB each across 6 cores. The base clock speed for the 1055T is 2.8 Ghz while the Black Edition 1066T is 3.2Ghz. Unfortunately due to not having a proper cooling setup to do overclocking, I cannot give you much opinion on how well these processors overclock, however initial tests I have read on other websites is that these can clock to 4.5Ghz on air no problem with the Black Edition 1066T.
I am running this at stock speeds due to not being able to overclock with my current cooling conditions but I am running an ATI Radeon HD5770 graphics card and 4GB of memory on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and I have yet to see a single hiccup with the 1055T model. The stock AMD cooler isn't the greatest, but it works fine for what I have been doing thus far. Playing games like Crysis while listening to music, creating ISO's, downloading and encoding high quality video at the same time seems to run pretty smoothly so it certainly can multitask with ease. And for the 210 Canadian dollars I paid for it, the value is excellent. If you are looking for a processor that will help you multitask without breaking the bank and can let you run games. These run best on the new AMD 890GX chipsets, I purchased a Gigabyte motherboard with USB 3.0 and SATA 3 6Gb connectors on it for future proofing and I don't think I will need to replace this processor for a long time, even at stock speeds it allows you to do so much without causing slow downs on your system. Windows 7 boots in about 45 seconds to the log in screen, pretty much every modern game boots and runs extremely well even with a lower end graphics card installed in my computer.
If you are looking to do a build on a budget that will allow you to multitask, the AMD Phenom II X6's are certainly worth looking into as they are highly versatile. They may not have the same amount of raw power as Intel's i7 processors, but for what they are charging for an i7, you can buy yourself a better graphics card or more memory and still get an excellent processor. The biggest downside that AMD has had with their multicore hardware is the lack of cache which is really where Intel is superior, if AMD improved that part of their processors, they would be walking over Intel easily.
