Our beloved AMD has released a subpar product once again! Thank you!

Good Luck! It's still pathetic!

Nothing to see here, move along... at the end of the day its still a Phenom, which ain't very phenomenal...

So, at last an ERROR FREE Phenom has been released. Only 2 years after Intel's 4 core solutions and with lower performance still. What have AMD been doing all this time? No one really knows.

At least it's almost 60$ cheaper than 9300, but if you're going to overclock, phenom is still worthless, BE or not.

As a platform, AMD is still a hot item to OEM thanks to 780G and X3. For a decent low end system AMD is a winner, not to mention its huge potential in countries like India and China.

B2 Phenom FTL :D

Good article guys.

Just one thing, why put 'overclocking' section before test results, but not include overclocked performance in the same charts?

Hmmmmm.......

ZOMG....intels cheapest quad core only costs 35% more then AMDs...and on average performs 10-20% better real world apps.

Then of course theres the fact that their new "ground breaking" chip they put out every 3 months or so goes for $1500 or so, and performs marginally better than the almost identical chip that costs around $500.

But hey, at least with every new chip line...you gotta go and spend another $200-300 on a new motherboard that supports it...but it still will feel farmiliar since it's most likely the same socket design you're upgrading from. Maybe you'll even get to buy some new ram to support it since ram compatibility changes with that pesky FSB/NB thing.

2 years, 8 sockets and....how many pin layouts?

I'm very happy for you intel fan boys that brag about dropping several thousand bucks every 6 months or so to get marginal performance gains, no real design improvement outside of smaller die size, bigger slower cache and putting 64bit development at a standstill because intel can't figure that out quite yet.

But hey, AMD just managed to put out a board that will run vista, play Blu-ray, and even allow for passable gaming with no add in video card. Actually can build a vista system (board, cpu, 2 gigs of ram) for around $150. Not like intel had a big market share in that area or anything...oh wait..yeah they kind of did. But maybe they'll still compete with thier onboard graphic boards that can't run xp without an extra card.

Then again, what about the server market...intel server chips go for around $5k a piece, and put out 220-260w per chip...ah just like a cool spring breeze...of course with the cooling includes 8 high speed 120MM fans - 35mm deep and 6000 rpm. that nice heat output is coupled with the sound of a jet engine....and only with the need for a low power 1100w PSU.

Yes, they're faster. They're more expensive, they're seemingly plauged with driver problem and performance and compatibility issues....at least for awhile. But that's if you can get the new ones within the first 6 months of the "offical launch"

How bout you go do what was done in the old days, ya know when overclockers took all parameters into account.

Look at the speed of the processors.
Look at the Cache sizes.
Remember that the power consumption of the intel NB. should be factored in to even things up with AMDs on die memory controller in that power consumption of the cpu, ya know if you want to nit pick...or be accurate.
Look at memory speeds (notice that AMD still holds something like the top 30 slots in memory performance before intel makes it on the list, despite the often considerably slower speeds.

Now, go to tomshardware cpu charts. Look at the real benchmarks, not the theorhetical synthetic crap. Figure out the performance difference in each bench mark, then compare it to the corresponding piece of hardware that's benched.
Then factor in the price.

For example, back when the qx6850 was coming out with it's
$1500 price tag, it was benched against the Athlon 6000x2.
same clock speed,
intel chip has 75% more L2 cache,
50% more cores,
running 30% smaller die size
8% faster memory.

AMD still had like a 25% lead in memory performance despite it being slower, and real world app benchmarks the intel chip averaged 15-30% faster. The high end of the performance gain intel had was 45% in one bench. Intel quad, 2x4mb L2, 65nm die 800mhz ram..against the amd dual core, 2x1mb L2, 90nm 750mhz ram.

Average highend performance gain of 30% in real word apps.
Intel $1500
AMD $ 180
difference 88%
sad part, qx6850 had like a 20% high end performance gain over the $300 2.4ghz q6600 with other wise identical specs.

And now, the qx6850 still costing $1000, compared to the $200 Phenom has an avg performance gain of 10-20%, hitting a high at 35% in one bench.

If someone gave me an intel rig, sure i'd use it. But i'd much prefer to build 2 or 3 AMD rigs and over clock them to the breaking point and still be stable for the same cost of one intel rig.

lol it's just absurd that anyone can complain about AMD overcharging for a chip after doing the math, getting the pure clean hard facts about intels performance even compared with itself and the prices charged.

Intel has the lead, but it isn't as big as you amd flaming intel fanboys would like to belive, the performance in no way merits the price, and they don't lead in everything.

In fact, when it comes to innovation...they're way behind, look at the fact that it will have taken 6 years to release a chip with an IMC, and a couple more to figure out how to make a native quad core...

if I were to build a system for my grandma, and would be the wayxto go. Otherwise it really sucks. The poor performance can be clearly seen in the SETI@home application that the guys from berkley are cranking out. There the phenols perform at about 65% of the intelcquad core. Not to mention that there is no good compiler for c++ for the AMD platform.

Good review; shame there wasn't anything more unexpected to report, but the price cut certainly goes a long way towards making up for it.

Also glad to see that the new MMA benchmark is working out for you here, judging by its first usage. :)

AMD still need to lower prices at least another 25% to make the unPhenom a realistic alternative

Thanks for the thorough review, Ilya!

I would like to see the price/performance charts also. Everybody can see for what they have paid and expect nothing more.

yo guys (da ones at xbitlabs) should use a better mobo lyk da one from gigabyte which has better ocing than the one from dfi

i agree with ISeeFractals...

intel's q6600 get beaten to death with the e8400... im thinkin of gettin one 4 myself... or w8 till AMD transits 2 45nm process den lets see wot da hell can those stupid jews at da intel fab in israel can cook up...

Remember when you could squeeze an extra 1000mhz out of a San Diego core?Now AMD users are supposed to be content with getting
200 to 300 more mhz maximum?WTF happened AMD?I guess some
guys getting decent overclocks with X2's.Maybe the X3's will perform
better but I doubt it.AMD must really be dreading Nehalem's release.

Something I can really not understood is why people (almost all sites testing phenom so far) are so unfair with AMD new chip :
- AMD phenom are supposed to have improved performance in term of floating point calculations and not a bright integer unit. And so far every sites, xbitlabs included, avoid floating point benchmark and show integer only one. I'm feeling this is somehow unfair. And at least half of the information available to the tester is not displayed. Quite a pity !
- When new intel chips goes out, people always argue that they don't perform that good because the software are not optimized for the new chip. This holds also for AMD phenom for as much as I know ? In fact generally this argument is not of very much importance. In this case it really is : most codes are optimized to take profit of the very large cache of Intel core 2 processors. That is in real "microsoft" world case the new arch from AMD is really suffering an unfair burden just from the tuning used in the codes.
For those two reasons I feel a real world fair comparison between intel and AMD processorswould involve :
- optimizing the binaries for each processor in the same way that is making for both binaries that runs the fastest possible.
- Including floating point benchmarks as well as integer ...

Call me an AMD fanboy if you want. But I'm waiting to have my hands on their barcelona before making a conclusion about the performances. At least from this test I think it's not possible to get a sensible idea of the perfo of the new AMD proc.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-x4-9850 4.html

Why you are using ganged Memory mode?
Its much slower and the Phenom depends from a fast Memory Interface!
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-phenom_3. tml#sect1

"The second peculiarity of the integrated memory controller is the fact that it is implemented as two independent 64-bit controllers rather than a single 128-bit interface. This allows the memory of Phenom platforms to work in two modes: ganged and unganged. The first one is analogous to the usual 128-bit dual-channel mode. The second one implies that the CPU can deal with two independent 64-bit memory controllers thus processing two memory requests simultaneously, which is good for multi-threaded environments."

about amd s barcelona fp performance..
check at the bottom of this page :

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3162&p=11

take a look this....
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=29004 6&postcount=282

my 9850be on m3a32mvp is stable @3.1 (15.5x200) 1.3125v on a sycthe mugen HSf w/ arctic cooler AF12025PWM in push/pull config.
occt 2hours. (56.5c)
prime 2hours at least.
3.2GHz(1.4v) running 3dmark06, but a bit unstable. (cpu-z validated...)

(some unconfirmed reports are 3.5Ghz 1.5 on dfi...)

yes, well intel overclocks (8500 4Ghz on air?...) but i like amd.