AMD Phenom II 1090t- 6 Cores To The Rescue

Performance and speed is the one thing that many of us strive for in a computer. And while most people have been taught that the processor equates to the speed of the computer, that is unfortunately not the case. Computer speed is a combination of the processor, memory, graphics, hard drive, motherboard, etc. all working together. Think of hand eye coordination when you try to catch a ball. If you can see and think quick enough but your arm is not as quick or vice versa, you won’t catch the ball.

Now while the processor is not the entire speed of the computer, it does play a vital role. For a fast machine you need a fast processor. And the right processor will depend on the tasks you will be doing with said computer. I would also like to point out that simply because say a Intel Core i3 processor and a Intel Celeron both operate at a clock frequency of 2.4Ghz does not mean they are the same. In fact unless you get into your higher end desktop and a few laptop processors like The AMD Phenom II or Intel Core i7 series, the clock speed is almost irrelevant. Different classes of processors are designed for different task. For example the Intel Atom processor is simply designed for basic internet usage. Whereas say an AMD Turion II is designed to handle multimedia usage, Internet, and Office applications. But I am getting of topic.

Today, I’m talking about the performance of the AMD Phenom II 1090T 6 Core 3.2Ghz processor that I recently installed into my new computer build. See previous articles for more details. This thing is a beast, and I haven’t even overclocked it yet. I’m not sure I need to.

Some measurements of performance I noticed and I apologize for not being precise in time measurements, but when I transferred 240GB of files from a USB 3.0 Hard Drive the operation completed at around 30 minutes. Previously with older hardware this would take hours and hours. Granted this would take longer with a USB 2.0 drive, but transfer speeds between internal drives have given me similar performance. Taking a Blu-Ray Movie (unprotected) featuring 1080p video at just over 2 hours and a 6 channel audio track; I was able to convert to a 1080p 6 channel audio Mpeg 4 in just over 45 minutes. The last time I attempted this was with a Intel Core i7 920 and it took almost the entire 2 hours. And that was with the same graphics card, an AMD Radeon HD4850.

But let’s take a look at some hard numbers and comparisons. First let’s take a look the Windows Experience Index. In the first image you see the AMD Phenom II 1090T gets a score of 7.5. The highest score achievable is 7.9. Next my Intel Core i7 960 scoring a 7.5 as well. These two are very close. And for good measure here is the score from my laptop featuring a Intel Core i7 620. It scored only a 6.8.


I’m a realist and I understand the mainstream user does not want to reinstall all those applications and programs and then reconfigure their system. Thus with this build, I didn’t do a clean install of Windows 7. I used my previous drive from my last build and simple added and updated drivers and software. Had I gone ahead with a clean install I would no doubt have a much more powerful system. But Even so, I am very happy with the performance and would agree that this is a rock solid processor from AMD capable of very demanding applications. I’ve not yet run into a scenario where I was over taxing this system. And that’s with all the high definition video editing I do, sweet; indeed!