Final thoughts and rating

AMD's release of the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition CPU is a clear and obvious move to extract the very last drop of performance from the ageing architecture that has its roots in the K8 chip first brought to market over seven years ago.

Now refined, tweaked and polished enough to arrive with a native 3.3GHz frequency run across six cores, the 1100T goes toe-to-toe with Intel's Core i7 chips and isn't the first one to blink. Yes, the £727 Intel Core i7 980X EE slaps it into submission when the going gets tough, but one could build a reasonable PC around the 1100T and still have change left over for a game or two. More importantly, AMD's finest consumer CPU to date does well against the Core i7 870, 930, and 950 chips - and this is precisely its raison d'etre.

1100T BE, though, is nothing more than a slight clock bump compared with incumbent 1090T. We reckon that readers shouldn't consider it if they have a Phenom II X4 or X6 already in the socket. Folk upgrading from older PCs - and, remember, AMD provides a long platform path - would do well to put it on their shortlist for a sub-£1,000 PC build.

AMD's value proposition continues to be strong in both the CPU and GPU markets. The supporting 800-series chipsets are solid and the latest AM3 processors are really rather good, helping mitigate the long-overdue arrival of the Bulldozer architecture.

We can only hope that AMD's continued presence in the mid-range CPU market, solidified with the £200 Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition, will influence Intel enough to drop the pricing of its six-core, 12-thread Core i7 chips. But maybe that's just a pipe dream.

The Good

Fastest AMD consumer CPU to date
Genuinely priced to sell
Overclocks well enough

The Bad

Serves as a minor clock bump to present 1090T; nothing new

HEXUS Rating

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition

HEXUS Awards

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition

HEXUS Where2Buy

TBC.

HEXUS Right2Reply

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hexus, p3
The HEXUS.PiFast test, however, relies on frequency above all else, and the CPUs' Turbo ability is more important than number of cores.

Presumably you mean frequency x IPC. If it were raw frequency then the X6 should be beating the lower frequency chips from Intel, which it's not.

Otherwise, tasty review and product. Amazing how much AMD are managing to squeeze out of the process. We could have just done with it a bit earlier to directly compete with Intel.

Yes, the £727 Intel Core i7 980X EE slaps it into submission when the going gets tough, but one could build a reasonable PC around the 1100T

Just reasonable?! :D

Yup, should read like-for-like frequency, or IPC x frequency, as you've pointed out. :)

this_is_gav
Just reasonable?! :D

You can tell I've been using GTX 580 and HD 5870 GPUs for too long. :P

AMD is releasing the Phenom II X6 1100T - a drop-in replacement for the current range-topping 1090T.

And guess what I bought last week … doh! :wallbash:

That said, if it's only a tiny speed bump over the/my 1090T then I suppose that I shouldn't be too unhappy.

One big advantage that AMD has over Intel is that the latter seem hellbent on introducing a new socket pretty much every 12-18 months - which surely isn't the best idea ever. :help:

Good review from Hexus (as usual?) - and I think that the point about being able to make up a system that comes some-way to a 980X based one, for a fraction of the outlay, is well-made. Certainly that's the argument that persuaded me to stay loyal to AMD (K6, then Duron, Athlon, Athlon64, and now PhenomII-X6) for my tower PC (portable devices though have all been Intel). Close-run thing this time - the 800 series i7's looked very inviting.