Compare Ph-II 805 w/ Athlon II 620

I've been shopping processors for week or two and I wanted to verify my thinking before making my purchase. I'm looking for something that will be a drop in replacement in a Gigabyte board which has an X2 7750 BE w/ 4gb of DDR2. My major use is for transcoding Blu-ray files w/ x264 codec.

Now, assuming price is the same (I found the Phenom II 805 for $105 and the Athlon II 620 for $99) I should prefer the 805 shouldn't I?

The only differences (that I can see) are:

* 2.6GHz of the 620 vs. the 2.5GHz of the 805.

* Addition of 4mb of L3 cache on the 805.

I assume that they would both overclock to simlar levels on average? If I don't overclock, I would expect the L3 cache to be of more use than the extra 100MHz? Are there any other considerations I'm ignoring?

I know the Phenom is an OEM package which doesn't include an HSF, but I have a few laying around that should be fine.

What am I overlooking? Why aren't the 805's more popular? I almost couldn't find any reviews on them, and definitely couldn't find anything comparing them with the 620...

I did some Google searching after reading your post, and could find very little as well. The best I could do was find reviews comparing the Phenom 805 to the Core 2 Quads in video work, then find similar Intel Core 2s in Athlon 620 reviews and see how they stack up. Clock for clock the Phenom II is going to be faster with its L3 cache, but I don't know if their would be any significant disadvantages in choosing the Phenom over the Athlon.

The deal breaker for me in this situation would be to research the average overclockability of both chips, but I can tell you in multimedia productivity and encoding my Athlon does not seem to miss L3 cache much.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=106&p2=86

As a disclaimer I own the 805. Either will suit your needs, that said for the money the 805 is likely a better buy.

The 805 is an interesting part. It's fairly fast, mine OC'd to 3.0ghz (and I unleashed the full 6mb of cache) effortlessly with rudimentary clock bumps. No voltage tweaks, no super cooling. The reason there is so little out there is it's an OEM only part as far as I have been able to tell. Meaning no fancy retail packaging etc. That usually means no reviews/test samples. I'm very happy with mine, and I know the 630 guys all love theirs. It's a coin flip really.

how much different are the prices? Edit...nevermind I see.

For the money, I'd get the higher cache part. You can always change the speed of the chip, but you can't add cache.

I don't know that 805 exist, I would go with the 805 since it has L3 cache eventhough not all of them. You are almost guaranteed to get a higher clock speed than stock through overclocking, how high is a luck of draw but you can add more voltage if needed. Unlocking core or cache is never guaranteed and if you have a dead core or cache, no amount of voltage can make it work.

805, almost the same price get more cache my friend, you will notice the difference in cache sensitive tasks

There was just another thread almost exactly like this. As I said in that one, if gaming is a concern, it is strongly suggested you got with some form of Phenom II with full cache. If you are really strapped for money the X3 720 is recommended. As the recent review on tomshardware showed, almost all games will benefit from a minimum of 3 cores, where the 4th rarely offers further benefit. And the more cache the better for gaming. So the X3 720 (BE if possible) is the best choice, 3 cores and the full 8mb l3 of an X4 phenom II. They also have a decent chance to unlock into a full Phenom II X4. But again, if gaming is a concern, leaving it with 3 cores and overclocking it to the max (very often, it wont oc as well with the last core enabled vs disabled) will almost always yield better gaming performance.

Good luck! Lastly, if you cant afford the x3 720, a dual core Phenom II with the full cache will be the next best choice, IMO. The ones based on the deneb core also have a chance to unlock into an X4.

Originally Posted by Malakai

There was just another thread almost exactly like this. As I said in that one, if gaming is a concern, it is strongly suggested you got with some form of Phenom II with full cache. If you are really strapped for money the X3 720 is recommended. As the recent review on tomshardware showed, almost all games will benefit from a minimum of 3 cores, where the 4th rarely offers further benefit. And the more cache the better for gaming. So the X3 720 (BE if possible) is the best choice, 3 cores and the full 8mb l3 of an X4 phenom II. They also have a decent chance to unlock into a full Phenom II X4. But again, if gaming is a concern, leaving it with 3 cores and overclocking it to the max (very often, it wont oc as well with the last core enabled vs disabled) will almost always yield better gaming performance.

Good luck! Lastly, if you cant afford the x3 720, a dual core Phenom II with the full cache will be the next best choice, IMO. The ones based on the deneb core also have a chance to unlock into an X4.

It's 6mb of L3 cache not 8. For the money the x3 isn't that great a buy these days. You'd be better off with a x2 (if your really budgeting) or the x4 in either Phenom version, or Athlon for the x4. The 805 eats the x3 lunch money as it were as does the 620 really. Just curious though where you get the idea that 3 cores is better than 4 for gaming? Isee stuff like this stated all the time, how a dual core is better or a triple core..yet when we see the benchmarks the quads always win. Always. More cores means smoother play, as the OS has cores free to do it's job. I'll take a quad any day of the week over a comparably priced dual or triple core, even for gaming.

interesting

Ya 805 is a new one for me. Given the OP's main usage, go the 805 all the way. It is a win win in my mind.

Originally Posted by funkydmunky

Ya 805 is a new one for me. Given the OP's main usage, go the 805 all the way. It is a win win in my mind.

Well, they seem to be an OEM part, so you probably have to buy a heatsink...only downside if you use the stock one normally.

Originally Posted by Ghettobox

IJust curious though where you get the idea that 3 cores is better than 4 for gaming? Isee stuff like this stated all the time, how a dual core is better or a triple core..yet when we see the benchmarks the quads always win. Always. More cores means smoother play, as the OS has cores free to do it's job. I'll take a quad any day of the week over a comparably priced dual or triple core, even for gaming.

Most games don't use more than two cores. Some are able to fully load two cores and put a partial load on the third, say 25%. That still leaves 75% of a whole 2.8 GHz core for background tasks - if your CPU usage at the desktop is more than a few %, you've got problems anyway - those background tasks should not occupy a whole core.

The advantage of the X3 in gaming is that it has got a higher cache to core ratio. You get 2MB L3 per core instead of just 1.5MB. Yes, the cache is shared, but if the fourth core keeps pissing in the L3 pool even though it's idle, that leaves less cache for the other three cores that are actually in use running the game.

This is why, per clock, the X3 is slightly faster than the X4 in games (scroll down to the end for game benchmarks):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=81&p2=83

So purely for gaming, the Phenom II X3 BE is still a better buy for the money than either the X4 8xx or the Athlon II X4, at least for now. The latter is even slower than the original Phenom, since has no L3 at all vs 2MB for the Phenom I. However the OP will use the CPU primarily for transcoding, not gaming, so then the fourth core can be very useful. The Phenom 805 is a better buy IMO, but you might want to look around for a 910 or 920 since they come with the full 6MB of L3.

How about some actual benchmarks?

Benchies from anandtech.

Notice how ironically the only benchmarks where the X3 720 beats the X4 805 are in gaming? Better framerates in every game they tested (Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Crysis Warhead). But it is a bit worse on every other test. And they didn't test any of them with FSAA, VSync or AF on.

Benchies
Some more
Still more...
Yeah..more..


Interesting read


I think it show you really need to look at what games you play, and what kind of balance you need to strike to decided which way to go in the x3/x4 debate. I do stand corrected in the quads always win argument. That said, I'd still grab the 805 if I am the OP.

Originally Posted by Earley

How about some actual benchmarks?

Benchies from anandtech.

Notice how ironically the only benchmarks where the X3 720 beats the X4 805 are in gaming? Better framerates in every game they tested (Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Crysis Warhead). But it is a bit worse on every other test. And they didn't test any of them with FSAA, VSync or AF on.

"FSAA, VSync or AF" would all be dependant on the GFX card. Not the CPU in any way at all.
The point with a 4 vs 3 core is that games will be and are now even supporting the extra core. Future games will not be core stupid, but will leveage what ever they can.
The X3 720 is BE so if one was a O/C'er it may still be the best option at the moment. As pointed out the 805 may need a HS (ask the many O/C'ers to sell their un-used stock for $5) but the 720 BE would need an after market HS if one was to get the most bang out of it.