AMD Phenom II X6 1055T review

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Verdict:

A better deal than the faster 1090T, and a reasonable choice for those upgrading, but Intel quad-core chips are both quicker and cheaper.

Review Date: 27 May 2010

Price when reviewed: £160

Buy it now for: £123
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.aria.co.uk

Reviewed By: Seth Barton

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

The fastest processors in any range are usually available first, and often garner the most attention, but it’s the more modest models that usually work out to be the best value for money. After our lukewarm reception of AMD’s new six-core Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, we were hoping that this cheaper 1055T would provide better value for money.

On paper it’s a good start, costing just two-thirds of the price for only a 400MHz performance cut – 2.8GHz rather than 3.2GHz. In every other respect it’s identical to its larger sibling.

In our tests it proved to be fast, but not fast enough to justify its cost. Scoring 113 overall it simply can’t compete with the best quad-core chips – such as the slightly cheaper Intel Core i5-750, which scores 136 overall.

Even in our video-encoding test, where a six-core chip should thrive, it proved to be slower than the Core i5-750 and only marginally faster than AMD’s similarly priced Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition.

If you’re building a new PC, and want plenty of processing power, then we’d recommend the i5-750. If you’re upgrading an existing AMD PC, then a cheaper quad-core processor would be sufficient for the vast majority of uses. However, if you’re upgrading and need lots of multi-threaded performance, then this is a good buy for those who like to tinker with their hardware, as the lower clock speed gives it a lot more room for overclocking than on the X4 965. That’s a pretty small niche however, and so our final rating reflects that.

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User comments

Software needed

The thought occurs that to make the most of six core chips you need software capable of utilising them to their maximum potential. I would like to see a review that uses Windows' Task Manager to look at how the Performance is balanced across the cores. Perhaps the six cores aren't using the extra two as efficiently as they could be.

By CeltiKaos on 1 Jun 2010