AMD Value Midrange
The AMD Value Midrange system is built around the new Phenom II 920 2.8GHz quad-core CPU. Until the introduction of Phenom II last week the 9950 was the top AMD processor you could buy and it was an excellent value. With the Phenom II shipping at introduction AMD has wasted no time in lowering the street price of the 9950, making a great CPU an even better value at $150. Still, the Phenom II offers better raw performance than the 9950 and much better overclocking. The Phenom II architecture is more like Intel's latest Core i7, and while the i7 is still the fastest current CPU the Phenom II competes better than the Phenom with i7. For those reasons we really wanted to select the Phenom II 920 for the AMD Value Midrange.
This seemed a bit of a stretch given a budget of $1500 until Foxconn told us they were reducing the price of their 790FX board by $60 and offering an additional $60 rebate. With a new lower price of $105 for the excellent Foxconn 790FX board, it became a much easier task to put together a hot top-performing Phenom II system for under $1500 complete.
| AMD Value Midrange PC | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor | Phenom II x4 920 (2.8GHz x4, 4x512KB L2, 6MB L3) |
$235 |
| Cooling | Tuniq Tower 120 | $54 |
| Video | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB | $230 |
| Motherboard | Foxconn A79A-S AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX | $105 |
| Memory | 4GB DDR2-1066 Patriot Viper PVS24G8500ELKN | $48 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB | $110 |
| Optical Drive | LG BD/HD DVD / 16x DVD+/- RW GGC-H20LK | $99 |
| Audio | On-Board ADI AD2000B 8-channel HD Audio | $0 |
| Case | COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black ATX Mid Tower | $80 |
| Power Supply | CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified | $80 |
| Display | Acer H213H bmid Black 21.5" 5ms HDMI Widescreen 16:9 Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor (1920x1080) | $199 |
| Speakers | Creative Inspire T6100 76 Watts 5.1 Speaker System | $57 |
| Input | Microsoft CA9-00001 Black PS/2 Standard Keyboard and Optical USB/PS2 Mouse - OEM | $16 |
| Operating System | Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM | $99 |
| Bottom Line | $1412 | |
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The Phenom II 920 is the lowest priced Phenom II CPU but it is still clocked at 2.8GHz, just a bit below the top Phenom II 940 at 3.0GHz. Conventional wisdom, even after the relaunch of the Phenom earlier last year, was that Phenom finally was overclockable (many reached 3.4GHz with the 9950BE) but that Phenom was not in the same overclocking league with Core 2 or i7. Phenom II shatters that old saw, as we reached 3.9GHz at 1.52V with the Phenom II 940. The 920 may or may not be an even better overclocker, but only time can answer that question. Overclocked or not the Phenom II is very competitive with current Intel offerings, and this system built around the Phenom II 920 does not really have any Core i7 competition. Intel's cheapest i7 is their 920, but pricing begins at $295 for that CPU.
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The Tuniq Tower 120 can move a lot of air and it is superb at dropping temperatures in ambitious overclocks. It has been on sale recently for as little as $45, but the best price we could find today was $54. If the Tuniq Tower 120 won't cool it then the overclock is not likely doable. At moderate to low fan speeds the Tuniq is quiet, but it can become quite loud at maximum speed. Find a nice balance of fan speed and cooling and you will find the Tuniq an excellent choice.
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The component that made the $1500 Phenom II system possible is the Foxconn A79A-S, which is compatible with AM2+/AM2 and is based on the AMD 790FXchipset. The selling price of this Foxconn A790FX board has been $224 until Foxconn dropped the price $60 and then added on a $60 rebate. That drops the final price to a budget pleasing $105. This Foxconn board suffered from early BIOS problems, but the last few versions of the BIOS are very capable and extremely stable. We have no problem recommending the current Foxconn A79A-S motherboard as the heart of a stable and very overclockable Phenom II system.
Memory could be the same OCZ choice as the Intel Value Midrange, but another potential 4GB kit is featured in the AMD system build. The 4GB Patriot Viper PVS24G8500ELKN provides solid DDR2-1066 performance at 5-5-5-15 timings at DDR2-1066. With the current $25 rebate the final price is just $48.
The rest of the component selections are shared between the Intel and AMD Value Midrange systems. You can find more information on these component choices on page 3, which details the common system components.
Comparing our $1500 systems, we find that AMD is likely the best performer at this price point of $1500. It has been a long time since we could say this about a midrange system, and it is very good for all of us that Phenom II is competitive with i7 - and cheaper than i7. However, as AMD finally competes in the 45nm space Intel is ready to soon move to an even smaller die size. Still, no matter how long or short the parity, the Phenom II competition is good for all buyers.
With the prices of computer components generally trending down, both our AMD and Intel Value Midrange system builds came in closer to $1400 than our original $1500 budget. This gives you some room to customize some of the components to your liking - such as adding a keyboard or laser gaming mouse.
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Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
We have revised the comment to more accurately reflect what we were trying to convey. We don't want to leave the wrong impression on this. Core i7 is definitely the fastest current CPU, but Phenom II competes with i7 much better than Phenom. Phenom II also has a cheaper $235 CPU that offers terrific performance for the price7Enigma - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
Thank you for the revision. I did not want it to seem that I thought you were being biased towards the Phenom II, just that it was a bit misleading in its original form. While architecturally it is closer to the Core i7, performance-wise it's closer to the Q9300/Q9400.I think for a mid-grade build the Phenom II is probably in a sweet spot as current high pricing for DDR3 ram and the motherboard (not to mention questionable mobo stability) make total system costs much higher for an i7 build.
As it is, I'll be building a very inexpensive system based off your $1500 Intel dual-core system as I game on a 19" LCD and do very little work that requires/is enhanced by a quad core. It's going to be a hold over system for a year or two and so I thank you for the 775 mobo and ram recommendation.
7Enigma - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
*speaking of the 920, not the 940.7Enigma - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
*PhenomTo add from Anand's own 920/940 review:
"Looking through the performance results, it's also worthwhile to recognize just how fast Intel's Core i7 is. Across the board Core i7 is the fastest thing out there. If the motherboard guys could get X58 board pricing down below $200 and DDR3 memory was available at the same price as DDR2, then the i7-920 would be the clear recommendation. The entry-level Core i7 is pretty much faster than the-top end Core 2 Extreme or the Phenom II."
and
"We must not forget that Phenom II is competitive with a 45nm derivative of a 2+ year old architecture."
Again I'm not bashing AMD's Phenom II chips, just that it is very misleading to say the performance is more in line with the i7.
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
All of your comments add to the perspective on Phenom II. I believe I made it very clear that at $2000 the entry i7 was likely faster than the Phenom II. I also said on p.4 "Phenom II performance is more in line with Intel’s latest Core i7" and that is certainly true. The L3 cache of Phenom II is definitely more like i7 than the cache design of the Phenom CPU.However, Anand also points out the real advantage in the CPU/Board price enjoyed by the entry Phenom II 920. As I also said Intel's cheapest i7 is $300. There is no $235 i7 and cheap but capable motherboard as there is for Phenom II.
The article was crystal clear that Intel still owns the top, and that is i7, but AMD is competitive now in the mid-range to lower high end, where it was not before. This is not being a fan-boi as I personally run i7, but if I've given AMD a little more slack in this article I will not apologize. AMD has been trailing Intel for a long time, and in fairness Phenom II performance and overclocking came as something of a surprise to reviewers. Most did not expect the chip to be as comnpetitive as it is. AMD deserves a little credit here. I will probably use a Phenom II in my next build, as competition is good for all of us.
strikeback03 - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
I was wondering about that as well. Anand's launch review of Phenom II seems to show that outside of gaming the i7 920 typically holds 10-20% better performance, with occasional tests showing even more. So at the $2000 price point that would likely make the AMD system the better gaming system due to the video card, but the i7 system likely faster in most other applications.Are any of the ~$200 X58 motherboards going to offer 6 RAM slots? 12GB would be even more expensive with only 4 slots.
As the PCIe X1 slots are often lost in an SLI/Crossfire setup, do any of these boards have trouble using a X1 sound card in an X16 slot? IIRC someone reported previously that some boards didn't like running X16 slots slower than X4.
Jaramin - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
Somehow, this doesn't feel very midrange to me. It's as if the class was defined by the price instead of the performance.The value midrange aught to be performance midrange, and performance midrange is clearly high end, because one bumb ahead leads us to ultra-high end, you know, the machines we dream to have but would never buy?
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
We did not use the term Midrange to start an argument, although a discusiion of the definition of Midrange is always interesting. Since we described our Bargain Systems as Under $1000 I have changed the title description to $1000 to $2000. I hope that removes any confusion about what is covered in the guide.Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
From the Introduction:"Midrange can start as low as $1000 and extend all the way up to around $2000, which gives a lot of flexibility in terms of choosing components. In this era of declining prices and increasing value, the midrange also covers a wider area than in the past - just as we saw in the under $1000 segment. Our budget systems near $1000 were really representative of what we might have called midrange in the past. Similarly, our $2000 system is closer to what may have been defined as high-end in earlier guides.
It's fair to ask, then, why we haven't tossed the price classes for our guides and defined new ones. That option was considered, but the fact remains that high-end prices have not declined like midrange and entry prices. New architectures have also been recently introduced at the high-end, so the definition of high and mid are shifting as the Intel Core i7 and Phenom II move into our computing space. We are already seeing a few X58 boards that will be selling for around $200, which would allow a decent Core i7 build at around $2000. Similarly, you can build a very capable Phenom II box for that same $2000."
AntiM - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link
I consider midrange to be in the $600 to $800 price range.