Official Phenom Reviews Thread

[JumpingJack]

Well since this made a sticky... here are all the reviews so far:

XbitLabs (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-phenom.html) Phenom @ 3GHz
Digit-Life (http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/mainboard/ddr2-yorkfield-phenom-page1.html) investigating memory controller
Bit-tech (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/12/13/amd_phenom_9500_9600_9700_and_9900/1) Phenom 9900; ganged Vs unganged modes
Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153)
Hexus (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10427&page=1) Phenom 9600
Hexus (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10648&page=1) Phenom 9900
HotHardware (http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/AMD_Spider_Platform__Phenom_790FX_RV670/)
ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2218301,00.asp) Preview
ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2226939,00.asp) Review
FiringSquad (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_phenom_preview/)
Techwarelabs (http://www.techwarelabs.com/articles/other/phenom-spider/)
Bcchardware (http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4889&Itemid=81)
Tomshardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/)
PCPer (http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=483)
PCWorld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139725-c,amd/article.html) <--- Ouch!
HardOCP (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQyMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==)
HardwareCanucks (http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3327-amd-phenom-x4-9600-performance-preview.html)
LegitReviews (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/597/1/)
Hexus (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10452) (Bang for the buck analysis, not in the UK anyway there appears to be some eTailer gouging)
TechReport (http://techreport.com/articles.x/13633)
Guru3D (http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/477/)
Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/phenom_9600/)
PCTuning (http://www.pctuning.cz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9815&Itemid=28) (in czech)
Erenumerique (http://www.erenumerique.fr/test_processeur_amd_phenom_x4_9600_drole_de_rel_ve _-art-1804-1.html) (in french)
Hardware (http://www.hardware.fr/articles/694-1/amd-phenom-9600.html) (in french)
Matbe (http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/561/amd-phenom-9600-et-9500/) (in french)

Reviews are starting to pop up..... haven't read it all myself, note -- the Inq rumor that AMD was hosting a round of 'canned' benchmarks were SEMI-true, see Anandtech's "Tunsia or Tahoe" page 3, and Firingsquad's explanations of their data -- as such, a few of the links title the article as "Preview" or "Demonstration".

[RPGWiZaRD]

Now, we've emulated a Phenom 9600 by reducing the multiplier to 11.5x. This in turn automatically disabled Cool'n'Quiet 2.0 and its associated power-saving benefits. Furthermore, with it disabled we see single-threaded performance dramatically increase when compared to C'n'Q-enabled Phenom 9700, to the extent that the pseudo 9600 is faster.


One thing to note.

[JumpingJack]

One thing to note.

This is a good note... haven't read the entire review myself. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10427&page=15 without C&Q though power is a bit higher than Intel's 2.4 G

OUCH!!!


AMD's nascent Phenom also suffers under the considerable yoke of Intel's Core 2 Quad 6600 pricing, which at &#163;165 for a hugely-overclockable 2.4GHz part is something of a bargain. AMD, though, is pitching its slightly underperforming quad-core part at roughly the same price. The industry needs AMD to survive and succeed yet it's very difficult to make a compelling buying recommendation for a processor that's a year behind its competitor - one who has already moved on to a more-efficient 45nm manufacturing process - is between 10-20 percent slower in most benchmarks, and costs much the same.

[Speederlander]

We can debate all day whether the majority of consumer software is threaded enough to take advantage of four execution cores, but the immutable fact remains that AMD's fastest quad-core offering is slower than Intel's slowest. Compounding this depressing statement for AMD is the January 2008 launch of Penryn-based Core 2 Quads, furthering Intel's performance dominance.

ouch.

[LordHanderson]

waiting for today phenom presentation by AMD

[metro.cl]

didnt like the review, weird graphs but things dont look so good for AMD, yes they can counter Q6600 better performance by lowering prices, but that will hurt their profit.

[Zytek_Fan]

Thank you AMD, for making the decision to get a Yorkfield a lot easier :D

[JumpingJack]

didnt like the review, weird graphs but things dont look so good for AMD, yes they can counter Q6600 better performance by lowering prices, but that will hurt their profit.

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/AMD_Spider_Platform__Phenom_790FX_RV670/

Here's another.

[Metroid]

This is completely sad to say the least. We live in a capitalism world AMD. It is difficult to understand why AMD spent so much time and money to make a CPU that can not compete to Intel's offerings. They need to revise its short and long term plans once more.

Metroid.

[zanzabar]

this makes no sence why bench with nv mainboard drivers there is nothing nvidia

System AMD AM2+ system Intel LGA775 system
Processors AMD Phenom '9600' (2.3GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, 2MiB L3 cache, AM2+, quad-core)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (3.2GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2, dual-core)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775, quad-core)
Motherboard MSI K9A2 Platinum (AMD 790FX + SB600) ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n (Intel X38 + ICH9R)
Memory 4GBytes (4 x 1GiB) Corsair PC8500 Dominator EPP 4GiB (2 x 1GiB) Corsair DDR3-1333
Memory timings and speed 4-4-4-12 @ 800MHz 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1069MHz
Graphics card(s) ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB
Disk drive(s) Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS)
Optical drive(s) Sony DW-Q30A
BIOS revision VP.0BC (11/08/2007) 0504 (10/09/2007)
Mainboard software Vista pre-installed drivers + AMD AHCI Driver 3.1.1540.11 NVIDIA nForce package 15.01
Graphics driver Catalyst 7.11 BETA (8.43.1-071028a-055060E-ATI)
Operating system Windows Vista Business 64-bit
PSU OCZ GameXStream 700W
Monitor Dell 2405FPW

[JumpingJack]

Well, as much as I hate to link this site... http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/

Tom's is showing Phenom about 10&#37; slower clock for clock...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/page22.html

[Warboy]

Very Interesting none-the-less

[xlink]

didnt like the review, weird graphs but things dont look so good for AMD, yes they can counter Q6600 better performance by lowering prices, but that will put them deeper in the red per sale.

fixed

[justapost]

We acquired an engineering-sample processor that was coded to the Phenom 9700's clock speed of 2.4GHz. We also noted that it was clocked in with a 4GHz HyperTransport link speed, too.
...
Now, we've emulated a Phenom 9600 by reducing the multiplier to 11.5x.
...
We also note that the MSI motherboard did not support DDR2-1066 memory and, as such, its performance may not be indicative of retail models'.

So those benchmarks are as valuable as the previews. But the power consumtion does not look good.

[JumpingJack]

So those benchmarks are as valuable as the previews. But the power consumtion does not look good.

Dude. Don't try to 'emulate' out of this conclusion, 3 different sites all concluding the same.... clock for clock 10% slower than Intel.

A multiplier is just that, a multiplier.... it sets the core clock it won't change the IPC.

[alucasa]

Whether you like those reviews or not, it seems certain that K10 is only nearly as good as aging C2D.

When almost every other reviews from different teams say pretty much the same thing, it is time to accept it.

To add to the fire, my Barcelona is also not as fast as C2D.

[xVeinx]

About what what was expected. It would be interesting to note what sort of performance one gets out of an overclocked version, specifically retail. I'm not interested in buying a processor that my X2 4600+ will outperform :/, regardless of how cheap it is...

[Brother Esau]

Does this mean that the New AMD will not support higher than DDR2 800 Binned Ram?

[xVeinx]

Doesn't it seem weird though that the performance of the Phenom seems to be all over the board? I'm not crying foul or something weird, I'm just wondering why improvements in the architecture don't seem to impact the performance as much as they theoretically should.

Driver updates anyone? Oh wait.... :p:

[justapost]

Dude. Don't try to 'emulate' out of this conclusion, 3 different sites all concluding the same.... clock for clock 10% slower than Intel.

A multiplier is just that, a multiplier.... it sets the core clock it won't change the IPC.
I only was aware of the first one as i wrote this. But they used an ES version.
HotHardware seems to be the most accurate. Beside that it's slower that i expected it uses alot more power than i expected.

[Start]

So to summarize what I got from these reviews:

1. Clock for clock, the Kentsfield is faster 10&#37;+ faster.
2. The Phenom draws more power in both idle and load than their Quad Core counterpart.
3. AMD needs to ramp up the clocks of their chips.

[OBR]

This is completely sad to say the least. We live in a capitalism world AMD. It is difficult to understand why AMD spent so much time and money to make a CPU that can not compete to Intel's offerings. They need to revise its short and long term plans once more.

Metroid.

Thats the same like on GFX market ...

Phenom are slowest to compare with Intel, but maybe cheapest ...

[breakfromyou]

The ONLY way AMD might have a chance, is by winning everybody over through a superior platform. Tons of fun features, extras, and the whole IMC thing...it's tough, but possible. What makes it so tough is how fast your DDR2-800 will run with any odd/half multi. haha.

[GAR]

Man...........its the 90's all over again.........INTEL on top, AMD just a budget choice.......and wait were missing one thing..................3DFX!!!!!!! nVidia bring back 3DFX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[justapost]

Thats the same like on GFX market ...

Phenom are slowest to compare with Intel, but maybe cheapest ...
In germany 9500 169€ 9600 190€ (Source (http://www.golem.de/0711/56051-2.html))

Another review (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=7)
Idle power consumtion looks a little better compared to q6600.

[JumpingJack]

I only was aware of the first one as i wrote this. But they used an ES version.
HotHardware seems to be the most accurate. Beside that it's slower that i expected it uses alot more power than i expected.

Well, actually this is not good news overall ... I was expecting Phenom to fair a bit better... perhaps the errata that has been reported is holding things back, there have been several reports that it is still buggy.

Of course, this does not instill buying confidence, especially in the B2's ...

It is sad because this is gonna to make AMD's life just as tough through 2008, and if Nehalem comes in as Intel claims, may put it out of reach for a few years... and this is not healthy to have such a lopsided win.

[n91htmare]

Idle power consumtion looks a little better compared to q6600.

No it doesn't LOL.

9700 setup uses 6 more watts at Idle and an astounding 42W more at load.

better? lol.

[justapost]

No it doesn't LOL.

9700 setup uses 6 more watts at Idle and an astounding 42W more at load.

better? lol.
HotHardware showed 38W more in idle, 6W looks better than that.
I'm still not amazed but it's not as worse as it seemed first.

[Periander6]

In germany 9500 169€ 9600 190€ (Source (http://www.golem.de/0711/56051-2.html))

Another review (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=7)
Idle power consumtion looks a little better compared to q6600.

Phenom loses power consumption, performance, price/performance and performance per watt. It loses at everything.

Phenom = Epic Phail


Inevitably some of these Phenoms will sell, even though Intel is currently faster and offers better overall price-performance (does anyone else feel weird reading that?). Honestly the only reason we can see to purchase a Phenom is if you currently own a Socket-AM2 motherboard; you may not get the same performance as a Core 2 Quad, but it won't cost as much since you should be able to just drop in a Phenom if you have BIOS support.

[Jaivan]

or PHENOMinal failure. I'm so disappointed i guess i'll have to wait to Q1 2008 to see if amd can do any better. Their chipset looks good though.

[VulgarHandle]

why do all the reviews i see use the 9700 for all their tests, when it's not being released due to 'problems'

[n91htmare]

why do all the reviews i see use the 9700 for all their tests, when it's not being released due to 'problems'

First of all, problems are with certain "situations", the errata only effects a few things.

Second, it's a good "estimate" to show what is coming.

All this doesn't even really matter because the 9600 is still slower...

[JumpingJack]

why do all the reviews i see use the 9700 for all their tests, when it's not being released due to 'problems'

The problems are random lockups, in fact, it appears most or a good protion of the CPUs are not stable above 2.5 GHz, one could ask... why are they even launching at all?? Nonetheless, a 2.6 GHz included data point is important as it gives you an idea how AMD's top bin will compete -- which is still slower than the Q6600 unfortunately.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_phenom_preview/

After breakfast, reviewers were guided into a large conference room with a breathtaking view of the lake and surrounding mountains. In this room were 2.6GHz Phenom systems powered by a choice of two 790FX motherboards – either the ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe or MSI’s K9A2 Platinum, with dual Radeon HD 3850s running in CrossFire mode handling graphics duties on all systems. The test rig I sat in front of was powered by the ASUS motherboard.

Interestingly enough, all of AMD’s Phenom CPUs were running at 1.3V; that’s a little bit higher than AMD’s 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz Phenom CPUs, which run between 1.1-1.25V. I took a stab at overclocking my Phenom rig but got a BSOD before hitting 2.35GHz. For overclocking purposes AMD directed all of us towards one specific PC in the back of the room. Apparently all the other systems had very limited headroom for overclocking, as no one seemed to be able to push their system very far.

I had a little less than five hours to get my benchmarks installed and extract as many numbers as I could for this article before I had to head to the airport for my flight home. At the time, none of the media were given the actual launch frequencies, so the majority of the benchmarks I conducted were at 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz (assuming those were the launch speeds); in the final hour though I was given a tip from PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout of an email he’d just received with the launch speeds of 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz.

Ohhhh, and that Inq report about inviting people out for canned benches was true... evidently, though, they changed their policy and allowed people to install and run their own benchmarks. A step forward.

Anand had a different take on the 'Tahoe invitation':
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=3

[xVeinx]

Probably because this is what AMD was willing to send out. Anandtech has a great review I think. Sums up everything very nicely, although isn't as informative as other reviews in terms of breadth of testing. They also had the largest range of processors, including the 9900...

[R101]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=1

[OBR]

After first big mistake R600, we had next failure in line ... HD3870 and Phenom is not competitive to Intel and nVidia ...

[Start]

Only discrepency with Anandtech review is why only 3 processor tested with power consumption? Why not do all the CPU tested?

[n91htmare]

After so many promises and all that wait............. and then to see a mediocre product, I wouldn't even wanna bench the damn thing.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Another dissappointing but realistic review, AMD is slightly behind still.

For overclockers it will be even worse it seems when you seem to have to satisfy with S939 X2 launch overclock results of 2.6~2.85GHz on air which should correspond to sth like 2.4~2.6GHz Intel speeds (being positive that better mobos and tweaked mem timings can help a bit). So that looks a bit bad when current C2D/Q clocks to like 3.6GHz on air and Penryn seems to clock even better in average.

If Performance was the factor that sets price then Phenom would have to cost like 200 EUR or slightly less for the 2.3GHz part and even cheaper when Penryn arrives.

People can expect cheap quads from AMD.

[gallag]

looks like the truth train has rolled into town, lol. Time for a few people to be held to account, what were all those people that had "seen" phenom running talking about, Stone cold killer my arse

[gillll]

If you were looking for a changing of the guard today it's just not going to happen. Phenom is, clock for clock, slower than Core 2 and the chips aren't yet yielding well enough to boost clock speeds above what Intel is capable of. While AMD just introduced its first 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz quad-core CPUs today, Intel previewed its first 3.2GHz quad-core chips. We were expecting Intel to retain the high end performance crown, but also expected AMD to chip away at the lower end of the quad-core market - today's launch confirms that Intel is still the king of the quad-core market.

:(

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=1

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/914/phenom40295f1wd3.jpg


Surely Intel wouldn't allow AMD to simply come within the range of being competitive this late in the year. I honestly expected Intel to combat today's launch with something, something serious, something sinister. And indeed it did.

But instead of sampling a Core 2 Quad Q9450, the upcoming Penryn replacement to the Q6600, and instead of even further dropping prices to completely ruin the Phenom launch party Intel responded in a way that actually doesn't make much sense: by sampling a $1000+ Extreme CPU, the Core 2 Extreme QX9770.


http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/7510/qx97703fd753bgz0.jpg


Here's what really frightens us: the way AMD has priced Phenom leaves Intel with a great opportunity to increase prices with Penryn without losing the leadership position. Intel could very well introduce the Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.33GHz) at $269 and still remain quite competitive with Phenom, moving the Q9450 into more expensive waters. Intel has't announced what it's doing with Penryn pricing in Q1, but our fear is that a weak showing from Phenom could result in an upward trend in processor prices. And this is exactly why we needed AMD to be more competitive with Phenom.

not good @ all

[savantu]

looks like the truth train has rolled into town, lol. Time for a few people to be held to account, what were all those people that had "seen" phenom running talking about, Stone cold killer my arse

Second that.

Where are the "wait for B2 , BA , second coming , etc " crowd ?

More so , pretty much all the reviews tested Kentsfield , imagine Yorkfield which adds 5-10&#37; more performance and lower power consumption.

[JumpingJack]

This is just getting sad...


Of course, given AMD’s current track record when it comes to launches you obviously should take all this with a grain of salt. Today’s Phenom “launch” is clearly a paper launch designed to appeal to the financial community. In actuality AMD doesn’t even have enough parts available to seed the press with samples. That’s about as bad a sign as it gets when it comes to availability: if we can’t get our hands on CPUs, it’s doubtful that the general public will be able too either. We’re also not aware of a single Tier One system vendor that will be shipping Phenom PCs on launch day.

[gallag]

[H]


http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQyMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

KYLE BENNETT SAYS

Let’s Just Say It

It has been a long road for the computer enthusiast that looks to AMD for solutions. If you are an “Intel guy” and don’t look to other brands for computing solutions the last year has been good to you, and it looks like the next year will be even better. There is no other way to put it; I am disappointed in AMD’s Phenom. The Phenom is nine months late to market and has a hard time keeping up with Intel’s Core 2 processors when it comes to a clock to clock comparison. While you can cherry pick a suite of benchmarks that might give a Phenom to Core 2 comparison a good look on a clock to clock basis, the fact is Intel has better instructions per clock and better scaling than AMD’s Phenom. All that talk from AMD about “clock rate does not matter,” just went out the window as all of a sudden. Clock rate today means a lot. I have said for months now to AMD that if they did not launch at least at 3GHz they would have a failure on their hands. Today AMD comes out with 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz Phenom processors. Gone are the 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz parts it wished to be shipping at launch due to a TLB (translation lookup buffer) L3 errata issue. All this is being fixed by AMD, but it means lower clocked processors for now as the TLB issue popped up at 2.4GHz+. Undoubtedly today AMD is going to lose a lot of fans and a lot of folks that have been waiting patiently to be impressed by Phenom are going to throw in towel and move upgrade paths to Intel. But while it is a bad situation, there are some good things to be panned out of the muck.

[NightCrawler™]

One word comes to mind..... Dammit..!!! :(

[[XC] gomeler]

Was another thread but it was deleted me thinks. This isn't what I was hoping to see, it doesn't do too shabby in the gaming tests but otherwise it is just quad-core K8. Just hoping we'll see clockspeeds creep up, the overclocking didn't make me smile on the inside at all, especially with these 45nm Intel chips hitting stratospheric clocks. Come on AMD, I've been secretly pulling for you from the begining.. you need another K8 to maintain your stance.

[Shintai]

Surprise surprise...

As predicted, Phenom is slower vs the desktop than Barcelona was at the servers. No HT to benefit from.

[gillll]

yea i had opened the thresd twice... donno who del it.

from amd news room .

http://www.amd.com//us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~122053,00.html


AMD Phenom processors 9600 (2.3GHz) and 9500 (2.2GHz) are now available for $283 and $251 respectively in 1,000-unit pricing. The ATI Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory begins at US $179 MSRP and the ATI Radeon HD 3870 with 512MB GDDR4 memory from US $219 MSRP

low price is their only chance........

[[XC] gomeler]

Need to drop the 9500 below $230 and the 9600 around $250. Decent chip for an OEM but for us I doubt it'll garner much attention. The separate voltage planes for the L3/NB and CPU is pretty neat but just neat, not performance.

[STEvil]

Best part of the review:


To AMD: if you want to be Intel, start acting like it.

and a few lines previous to that as well of course...

[Brother Esau]

Why are you always in AMD threads creating havoc? If you despise AMD so much please GO AWAY!:rolleyes:

[Brother Esau]

Not looking good at all and memory performance also seems ghetto!

[Periander6]

Why are you always in AMD threads creating havoc? If you despise AMD so much please GO AWAY!:rolleyes:

What havoc? He's saying I told you so because he did in fact tell you so. If anything, he was too generous to AMD. This is a Phenom review thread and the reviews are pretty much unanimous, Phenom sucks.

[Shintai]

Why are you always in AMD threads creating havoc? If you despise AMD so much please GO AWAY!:rolleyes:

No, I dont. But unlike a few I tend to use reality.

This is mainly a hype that is busted..again. Some people failed to understand that even after Barcelona. What did you expect? A miracle chip made in the hands of god to counter all logic?

So pack your silly "Waah waaah AMD hater havoc blabla". I still buy AMD on the corporate desktop yet I could buy Intel if I wanted. Because unlike you I dont have unrealistic expectations! I bet the blaming of the company is soon to follow as usual...by the fanboys on your end.

[STEvil]

Given the number of configuration options found in the threads going on in the AMD section I wonder what kind of impact northbridge (HTT) speed has on overall performance.. among other things.

Can only really wait and see..

[JumpingJack]

Why are you always in AMD threads creating havoc? If you despise AMD so much please GO AWAY!:rolleyes:

I must agree with Periander and Shantai on this one.... there have been a few strong voices saying ... it's not going to hold water... he was right.

There is nothing wrong in pointing out that the data would support one to see past the 'SPEC2006fp_rate' and understand that the client performance would come up short.

[YukonTrooper]

Nope not at all. Looks like AMD will be Intel's b*tch for at least one more year. Thnx for all the big talk AMD, I honestly thought you might have had an ace up your sleeve. Looks like your delayed launch should never had launched at all. Looks like my money is going to Intel once again.

[Brother Esau]

Shintai.....you're a smart dude and I am not denying that you are wrong about this but you do like to stir the sh**t and that is a Fact!

[Kingcarcas]

Not regretting pulling the trigger on the E4500:D

[metro.cl]

Ouch!!!

[GreatWhiteHope]

From Bannitt (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQyMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==):


Let’s Just Say It


It has been a long road for the computer enthusiast that looks to AMD for solutions. If you are an “Intel guy” and don’t look to other brands for computing solutions the last year has been good to you, and it looks like the next year will be even better. There is no other way to put it; I am disappointed in AMD’s Phenom. The Phenom is nine months late to market and has a hard time keeping up with Intel’s Core 2 processors when it comes to a clock to clock comparison. While you can cherry pick a suite of benchmarks that might give a Phenom to Core 2 comparison a good look on a clock to clock basis, the fact is Intel has better instructions per clock and better scaling than AMD’s Phenom. All that talk from AMD about “clock rate does not matter,” just went out the window all of a sudden. Clock rate today means a lot. I have said for months now to AMD that if it did not launch at least at 3GHz it would have a failure on its hands. Today AMD comes out with 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz Phenom processors. Gone are the 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz parts it wished to be shipping at launch due to a TLB (translation lookup buffer) L3 errata issue. All this is being fixed by AMD, but it means lower clocked processors for now as the TLB issue pops up at 2.4GHz+. Undoubtedly today AMD is going to lose a lot of fans and a lot of folks that have been waiting patiently to be impressed by Phenom are going to throw in towel and move upgrade paths to Intel. But while it is a bad situation, there are some good things to be panned out of the muck.

[JumpingJack]

This is the part that really sticks out for me:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=3


AMD knew it wouldn't be able to trounce Core 2 with Phenom, especially not at 2.3GHz, so it wanted to control the benchmarking that was done on Phenom. For the first time in as far as I can remember, AMD wanted all benchmarking on Phenom to be done at a location in Tahoe, of course on AMD's dime. AMD would fly us out there, we would spend a couple of days with a pre-configured system and we'd head home to write our stories.


Validates this story:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/14/ati-bottles-spider-launch

[Methylphenidate]

Here's the Hardware Canucks Preview. Apparently they threw this together in 3 days....

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3327-amd-phenom-x4-9600-performance-preview.html

[Boschwanza]

Unlocked GP-9600 at retail price ?



Black and Unlocked

Second, the enthusiast has been promised a “Black Edition” Phenom right out of the gate. Given the Phenom’s performance levels, we petitioned AMD heavily to deliver an unlocked Phenom to the enthusiast and they have listened. AMD knows the current Phenom is not going to feed the enthusiast needs if it is locked. I see this unlocked 2.3GHz Phenom as a huge olive branch being extended to the computer hardware enthusiast community. From our experiences, it should be fairly simple for any user to get their 2.3GHz Phenom running at a respectable 2.8GHz, 2.9GHz, or 3GHz on the right 790FX motherboard. In order to show support for the computer hardware enthusiasts AMD is pricing these unlocked 2.3GHz Phenoms at the same price as the regular 2.3GHz Phenom. There will be no pricing penalty implemented by AMD for the unlocked CPU. The first unlocked CPUs will likely not carry the “Black Edition” branding but will be likely have a sticker on the box to identify the contents.

[savantu]

I find this pathetic , more so the fans who refuse to see the reality.Such practices on behalf of Intel would have filled the forums with TBs of posts , yet for AMD they keep silent.



First Tunisia, then Tahoe?

As a slightly off-topic but important sidenote, I thought it would be appropriate to let everyone know how AMD wanted this review to happen, and how certain folks within AMD were champions for the right cause and made it actually happen.

AMD knew it wouldn't be able to trounce Core 2 with Phenom, especially not at 2.3GHz, so it wanted to control the benchmarking that was done on Phenom. For the first time in as far as I can remember, AMD wanted all benchmarking on Phenom to be done at a location in Tahoe, of course on AMD's dime. AMD would fly us out there, we would spend a couple of days with a pre-configured system and we'd head home to write our stories.

Now I championed for this sort of early-access to Phenom months ago. I've visited AMD alone three times this year primarily to talk about Phenom, and each time I left without being able to report so much as a single benchmark to you all (everyone remembers those articles right?). I tried and tried to get AMD to part with some early Phenom data, because they were losing the confidence of their fan base and that's a sad thing to see for a company that really took care of this community when we needed it most.

After Tahoe AMD would eventually sample Phenom parts so we could test in our own labs, but there was no word on exactly when that would be. Chances are you would've seen a handful of numbers here today if we had gone to Tahoe with a full review of the chip hitting sometime in December.

Needless to say, I wasn't happy. I refused to go to Tahoe.

Don't get me wrong, a free trip to Tahoe is a wonderful thing, but Phenom deserved better. It deserved dedicated testing, it deserved a thorough review, not a quick glance over a couple of days. And I had a feeling that you all would agree. The time for AMD-sanctioned testing expired months ago, if Phenom was launching this week, we were going to have a proper review of it.

These days, AMD seems to be learning a little too much from the ATI way of doing things. If AMD had its way, today's Phenom review would have been done from beautful Lake Tahoe, on a system that AMD built, running at a frequency that isn't launching. Now there's nothing wrong with allowing us to preview Phenom under closed conditions, after all, Intel does it, but that's simply not acceptable for a review of a product that's four days away from being in stores. You all want to see a thorough review of Phenom, not some half-assed preview, definitely not after waiting this long for it.

A representative from AMD's PR agency in charge of the Tahoe trip asked me, somewhat surprised, "what, Intel doesn't work like this?".

Sorry to say, Intel doesn't. Today Intel let us preview the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, do you want to know how they did it? The FedEx guy dropped off a chip. No flights to Tahoe, no hotel rooms, no expenses at all. Don't get me wrong, I felt like an idiot turning down a free trip to Tahoe, but it was for AMD's own good. We've all seen the financials, these aren't times to be wasting money on silly trips around the country, it costs less than $30 to ship a CPU and that's all we need.

I get the point of Tahoe, it's to control the benchmarking, making sure we wouldn't be comparing a 2.4GHz Phenom to a 3.0GHz Penryn, but honestly folks - would we really do that to begin with? And I get the idea to wine and dine the press, with hopes of more pleasant reviews with better relationships - but this isn't a product to toy with. We're here to do our jobs and that is to review the product that will carry AMD for the next twelve months, and honestly we can't do that from some lodge somewhere away from our testbeds.

This isn't the first time AMD has heard of this from me, and there are many within AMD who feel the same way. The reason you're finding this rant in here today is because I am concerned for the future of the company. Competition is a good thing, we need to keep it around, but AMD needs to learn from its competitors. Intel and NVIDIA don't try things like this, business is always first with them, frivolous pleasures come next.

To AMD: if you want to be Intel, start acting like it.


http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=3

[Brother Esau]

So whats the long and short of this? No overclockability beyond 2.4ghz without suffering Errata side affect?

[JumpingJack]

I find this pathetic , more so the fans who refuse to see the reality.Such practices on behalf of Intel would have filled the forums with TBs of posts , yet for AMD they keep silent.





http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=3

Yep.

[grimREEFER]

This is the part that really sticks out for me:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=3



Validates this story:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/14/ati-bottles-spider-launch
even if they overclocked the phenom at lake tahoe, wouldnt it still be craptacular compared to the intel cpus?

[savantu]

790 vs. X38 in HDD, USB and Firewire :

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10427&page=13

The winner is ....X38.

[JumpingJack]

even if they overclocked the phenom at lake tahoe, wouldnt it still be craptacular compared to the intel cpus?

Even at Tahoe it was 'craptacular':

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_phenom_preview/


Interestingly enough, all of AMD’s Phenom CPUs were running at 1.3V; that’s a little bit higher than AMD’s 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz Phenom CPUs, which run between 1.1-1.25V. I took a stab at overclocking my Phenom rig but got a BSOD before hitting 2.35GHz. For overclocking purposes AMD directed all of us towards one specific PC in the back of the room. Apparently all the other systems had very limited headroom for overclocking, as no one seemed to be able to push their system very far.


This pretty much validates all the data and 'poor' overclocking leaks we got from epreview.com, and others.

[gillll]

might be rev 2 of cpus that are ocable?

after all we saw the amd overdrive with quad on 3ghz. so how noone has that kind of cpu ?

[Shintai]

I just hope those marketing tactics leaves with Hector...

[Shintai]

might be rev 2 of cpus that are ocable?

after all we saw the amd overdrive with quad on 3ghz. so how noone has that kind of cpu ?

You can always have 1 of a 1000 that can and cherry pick it.

I&#180;m sure Intel could find a Yorkfield that could perhaps run 4.5Ghz on air. But it would be very very long from actual product...

[grimREEFER]

We'll obviously revisit the QX9770 once we have production silicon

doesnt anand me production halfnium? :D

[Omastar]

This is quite sad. My AMD stock is gonna get plundered worse than western Europe in the early Middle Ages. :(

[JumpingJack]

might be rev 2 of cpus that are ocable?

after all we saw the amd overdrive with quad on 3ghz. so how noone has that kind of cpu ?

These are the rev 2's, I think you mean the B3 stepping.

Now... Intel, AMD or IBM for that matter can dial in higher clocks within process if they want, the problem is that they suffer from a huge fall off in yield or you can cherry pick the best of the best and push up higher that way.

At the end of the line the performance of the body or population of CPUs is normally distributed, see for example this paper:

http://eda.ee.ucla.edu/EE201A-04Spring/GIT-PV.pdf

All the variation from the processing, i.e. within die, die to die, wafer to wafer, even process step to process step ... leads to a normal distribution of performance when the device is finished (Fmax is bell shaped), there is a finite probability of getting die at the very far tail of that distribtion, unforunately that means very few actual die so 'cherry' pick. Unfortunately, you get so few you cannot make enough to go to market but you can make a few to show around to various HW sites and IT journalists to fool people into thinking you have a 3.0 GHz processor.

The other way, the yield killing way, is to specifically tune your lithography to make the gate length narrower... this drives up drive current and results in a higher probability of getting a fast clocking CPU, unfortunately 90&#37; of your die get hosed... so again, you cannot make enough to go to market but you can make enough to show a few HW sites and IT journalists and as such fool people (investors) into thinking you can make 3.0 GHz parts.

I think, in light of the errata, we now understand why AMD would not let anyone benchmark those 3.0 GHz processors :) ....

Jack

[hecktic]

lol @



But instead of sampling a Core 2 Quad Q9450, the upcoming Penryn replacement to the Q6600, and instead of even further dropping prices to completely ruin the Phenom launch party Intel responded in a way that actually doesn't make much sense: by sampling a $1000+ Extreme CPU, the Core 2 Extreme QX9770.


Thats code for smash AMD on the head:hammer: :hitself:

[JumpingJack]

lol @



Thats code for smash AMD on the head:hammer: :hitself:

Actually, it's sad ... because it is clear Intel doesn't need to do anything, they are still way in the lead ... this was just a stunt to make AMD feel even lower than they are :)

[gillll]

...........sad but true.

how did that happened ?

like it's not a small company - they have r&d all over the world .

can't be that intel produce on air 4ghz and above cpu and amd barley 3ghz !
we're their r&d asleep since the k8 intro ?

[awdrifter]

From seeing these results, AMD should've scrapped the native quad core and just MCM two Brisbanes instead of releasing this. The cost of production should be lower, and the performance wouldn't be too much worse, it might be even better because Brisbanes can hit 3ghz easily.

[Shintai]

...........sad but true.

how did that happened ?

like it's not a small company - they have r&d all over the world .

can't be that intel produce on air 4ghz and above cpu and amd barley 3ghz !
we're their r&d asleep since the k8 intro ?

I would say if I had to make an estimate:
1. They should have dropped SOI for bulk (Need to!).
2. Dropped the "native quad".
3. Never bought ATI (duh) so they could have invested in fabs and process,

But you also have to remember...Its still some 4-6x higher R&D in the other end. Its just a continual uphill battle. Its abit of a dream to think AMD can do this each time. With K8 Intel made mistake after mistake. And AMD made none basicly. Now Intel aint making any mistakes. And AMD falls over even the smallest rocks. And thats pretty bad when you are fighting goliath as a chimp.

I also think Hector got conned with ATI. Dave Orton knew were it was going. And he did the most brilliant deal ever for former ATI stockowners. Even the ATI division now is barely a shadow of its former glory. And clearly not a money maker in any terms.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well all I can say when seeing all these Phenom reviews is that I did a great choise swapping from an AMD S939 setup to a C2D setup (which is my first Intel setup I've ever owned :D) in August with the facts that are out now. I didn't have much faith in Barcelona/Phenom and since it was still K8 based I was expecting a tough task by AMD if they would be able to beat Core 2 Duo with only a further modified K8 core. I was expecting it would be able to match it at best so that even if I would go with Intel I had still had nothing to lose especially since my P35 supports upcoming Penryn 45nm as well. But that it's behind C2D this much and only about 20&#37; faster clock for clock than K8 sure was a bit less than I had expected.

Better luck next round AMD. Hope you've aimed your performance goals a lot higher then with ground-up built architecture.

[gillll]

would say if I had to make an estimate:
1. They should have dropped SOI for bulk (Need to!).
2. Dropped the "native quad".
3. Never bought ATI (duh) so they could have invested in fabs and process,


sad but true.........again....the problem as i think is that amd r&d deals with near future architecture and intel has much further future r&d.

[KTE]

The problems are random lockups, in fact, it appears most or a good protion of the CPUs are not stable above 2.5 GHz, one could ask... why are they even launching at all??The errata concerns problems relating to 1.225V 2.4GHz 9700, which is far below what was supposed to be released right now according to AMD (2.6GHz and even 2.8GHz FX which both were delayed too). That shows problems the day they didn't release 2.5GHz at Barcelona launch. Every company will try their best to release the fastest, no arguments, its a eP thing that wins most rounds. Some will remember, and I know Shintai is one of them who reported it so he will be aware, that Core 2 was hyped to release at 3.33GHz March 06. We didn't see this, not because they couldn't reach it, but no MFG releases products way outside the standard high TDP nowadays. By the time they could've, the marketing prices and demand was no where for 3.3GHz. Penryn top bin was stuck at 3.33GHz quad and 3.4GHz dual for over a year because of this problem again, but by July 07 things started to change for Penryn while K10h was still stuck below 2.3GHz in June 07. That much has always been quite clear.
Instability in 9700 isn't reproducible by us customers, only in AMD labs. For us customers, some of the reviewing guys have been able to get 3GHz stable out of the early B1, BA and B2 Phenom ES 2GHz/2.2GHz samples (not 9700), even the Taiwanese and Chinese early previews ran their 2GHz at 3GHz to simulate 3GHz Phenom, and so has Toms. HH/AT/FS weren't able to do this. But nevertheless, pretty much most of them made it quite clear "ES sample, we can't gurantee its representitive of the final retail". They could be worse or better in overclock headroom. Although it is obvious for a long time that K10h had problems with speed headroom and I stated it quite clear early on; the problem is TDP. 3GHz will probably be reachable on a 9700 but only with voltage, and not without massive power increase which is what AMD is trying to hide; I'm predicting that the ones around need ~1.5V for 3GHz. This is due to their manufacturing process choices, and exactly why they 'aint releasing em until binned much more for lower voltages/TDP. If a company can't make a product below the 130W TDP, it simply translates into process problems.

I don't have factual data on "yields" to comment.

The multi-core bandwidth is very low and latency is very high, worse than an E6750 at 2.4GHz, the memory bandwidth is also lower than a 2.4GHz E6750 at 824 5-6-6-19. The Sandra Arithmetic is again very low, even compared to many dual cores. I don't really know what to make of that yet until I get a retail myself but the tests indicate a v.bad product, worse than optimal expectations would deem, too much PR hype, too many lies and misleads and just failure in all processor departments concerned with a new product. I've already stated AMD reps mislead my uncle who is head at a major government enterprise, and that was all hype so he doesn't go the Penryn route which they knew he was after. I honestly had ordered X4 9700 from a store to test and find out myself and it was set to arrive 2 weeks from now. Many others had too. They will obviously be cancelled now and its a little too late for me to want to get Phenom to test now. For mid-January I made it quite clear: Q9450 please. Because it won't have an equal in price/perfromance/overclock for me.

Post#52 is as bad as it can get TBH.

[Morais]

Well, as I said in another thread, the only thing left to amd is the Quad Crossfire

[Boschwanza]

Is there a review that figured out differences between unganged and ganged memory performance mode?

[naokaji]

yes, in 3d rendering and media encoding the phenom looses against the Q6600... in gaming they are pretty much on par though.

so one has to actually think about what applications are used at all before deciding what to buy...

[JumpingJack]

yes, in 3d rendering and media encoding the phenom looses against the Q6600... in gaming they are pretty much on par though.

so one has to actually think about what applications are used at all before deciding what to buy...

Are we looking at the same data????
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=9
I see nothing but blue at the top. WRT to Q6600, one could argue Crysis is a tie, this is the only site showing that for Crysis though.... Oblivion looks like a tie too.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10427&page=11
No wins there, not even even.

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/AMD_Spider_Platform__Phenom_790FX_RV670/?page=12

It is unfortunately, hands down, across the board behind Intel.

[Shintai]

in gaming they are pretty much on par though.

so one has to actually think about what applications are used at all before deciding what to buy...

Not really....The phenom can only keep up in 2-3 games, while it loses in the rest.
And those tests are absicly high latency DDR3 vs low latency DDR2.

You would have to buy it for a specific game aswell then.

[Linus@ncix]

Setting the memory to Ganged yields a slight performance drop in some tests, but significant improvements in others. It's harder to stabilize DDR2-1066 in Ganged mode, but it can be done.

I'd say Ganged yields 5&#37; across the board if pressed to come up with a hard number. The Hardware Canucks review used ganged mode.

[accord99]

yes, in 3d rendering and media encoding the phenom looses against the Q6600... in gaming they are pretty much on par though.
Only if the game settings are pushed to be GPU limited. If not, or if the games are inherently more CPU dependent like RTSes or like Flight Simulator X, the power of the Q6600 shows up like here:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/694-8/amd-phenom-9600.html


so one has to actually think about what applications are used at all before deciding what to buy...
The Q6600 is pretty much a no-brainer vs the Phenom 9600 at this point. At worst, the Q6600 is a bit slower; at best it's much faster while using less power.

[JumpingJack]

Only if the game settings are pushed to be GPU limited. If not, or if the games are inherently more CPU dependent like RTSes or like Flight Simulator X, the power of the Q6600 shows up like here:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/694-8/amd-phenom-9600.html


The Q6600 is pretty much a no-brainer vs the Phenom 9600 at this point. At worst, the Q6600 is a bit slower; at best it's much faster while using less power.

Do you find this picture funny?
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/20/IMG0020893.jpg

[Morais]

I was looking for an upgrade...Looks like the dark side is tempting me, but I already feel de 45nm prices hurting my wallet

[accord99]

Do you find this picture funny?
Yep, in hindsight I wonder what exactly was going through Henri's mind when he was posing (and smiling) for that picture. I'd imagine AMD by then would have an indication that Kentsfield was going to pose an incredible challenge.

[bedlamite]

I wonder if AMD will be able to survive next year...

[BeardyMan]

This won't stop amd from selling though :)
The HD series is selling like cakes, and this Phenom wil do the same.

i like this quote
World's First True Quad Core Desktop Processor:

[JumpingJack]

I wonder if AMD will be able to survive next year...

Yeah, the industry won't let it happen. Large OEMs will shove these into low end boxes and sell plenty, as a result AMD will continue with volume.

There are a few critical problems I see for AMD at the moment.

a) The die size is huge and the margins will be small as they must price these to be competitive, they did not regain any pricing leverage.

b) Yields, despite what AMD tells it's investors, are not great -- Barcey is still a no show, and the initial reports is that the availability of Phenom will be scant.

c) Clock speed.... clock speed.... clock speed. While AMD down played it's importance, it is actually still part of the performance equation (Performance = IPC*Clockspeed) and the poor launch speeds is really hurting, the must work to get these up to help boalster the ASPs.

[JumpingJack]

This won't stop amd from selling though :)
The HD series is selling like cakes, and this Phenom wil do the same.

i like this quote
World's First True Quad Core Desktop Processor:

It sure as heck fire will stop them from making any money, 2008 will be another year in the red for AMD.

[BeardyMan]

It sure as heck fire will stop them from making any money, 2008 will be another year in the red for AMD.

that's why i have to wait for another week because of the out of stock already :rolleyes:

Edit*
On a side note is for 60% a paperlaunch as well...:down:

[JVguest]

It's the cache. With only 4x512 meg of L2 cache that actually is fast (the L3 is slow) barc could never match c2q/york. If it had 8 meg L2, I think barc would be 10% faster clock for clock than conroe, and just slightly better than penryn (excepting special cases where the divide latency and shifter really helps penryn). Increasing the L3 won't help much. Since the roadmap doesn't call for increased L2 cache size and we know Barc won't clock well for 2008, AMD will remain well behind Intel performance for all of 2008 (at least) and with Nehalem coming out, all of 2009. The gap isn't large though, and AMD will be fine selling a little cheaper than Intel. Too bad the spent a lot of money going native QC.

[roadie]

I will definitely be waiting until they get all the bugs ironed out. It seems it was even too early to launch today...

[Shintai]

This won't stop amd from selling though :)
The HD series is selling like cakes, and this Phenom wil do the same.

i like this quote
World's First True Quad Core Desktop Processor:

Sure not at these prices...

They could add worlds worst performing quadcore aswell. True means nothing.

[Shintai]

It's the cache. With only 4x512 meg of L2 cache that actually is fast (the L3 is slow) barc could never match c2q/york. If it had 8 meg L2, I think barc would be 10% faster clock for clock than conroe, and just slightly better than penryn (excepting special cases where the divide latency and shifter really helps penryn). Increasing the L3 won't help much. Since the roadmap doesn't call for increased L2 cache size and we know Barc won't clock well for 2008, AMD will remain well behind Intel performance for all of 2008 (at least) and with Nehalem coming out, all of 2009. The gap isn't large though, and AMD will be fine selling a little cheaper than Intel. Too bad the spent a lot of money going native QC.

No, cache dont benefit K8 or K10 arch much. Also the main reason for Core 2 to have so much cache is to counter the much lower memory bandwidth and hide the latency.

Again, check K8 512Kb vs 1024kb. And use 90nms for both to compare with.

[JumpingJack]

It's the cache. With only 4x512 meg of L2 cache that actually is fast (the L3 is slow) barc could never match c2q/york. If it had 8 meg L2, I think barc would be 10% faster clock for clock than conroe, and just slightly better than penryn (excepting special cases where the divide latency and shifter really helps penryn). Increasing the L3 won't help much. Since the roadmap doesn't call for increased L2 cache size and we know Barc won't clock well for 2008, AMD will remain well behind Intel performance for all of 2008 (at least) and with Nehalem coming out, all of 2009. The gap isn't large though, and AMD will be fine selling a little cheaper than Intel. Too bad the spent a lot of money going native QC.

I love these 'it is the cache' explanations.... it's like people don't understand what an integrate memory controller really does.

[KTE]

b) Yields, despite what AMD tells it's investors, are not great -- Barcey is still a no show, and the initial reports is that the availability of Phenom will be scant.While I sort of agree, I think that's old news in the server market. Barcelona availaibility was poor post official launch, production cost per 1000 CPUs is high when factoring in yield and the die size, much worse than 45nm Penryn, but it started to appear in good volumes and sold out repeatedly after around 25th October. Before that it was hardly available to enterprise customers AFAIK, especially the 2350. Not in ones and twos but in volume orders. However, Penryn server is hardly being sold and supported by major MFGs because of bad platform support and instabilities, which gives AMD room for much leway. HP is one and Rahul stated on the 14th Nov why (his site):


We haven't launched Intel's 45 Nanometer processor as planned. We, like many, were hoping that it would work flawlessly on certain chipsets - and well, unfortunately it doesn't - not yet anyways. Even though we were getting close to qualifying it - last week we received some really bad news. The bottom line is we're working on a solution for Nvidia SLI, but at the moment there isn't one.

Interestingly enough there are those out there configuring this processor in configurations which we *know* are unstable. I think their customers will be in for major disappointment based on current issues. ..although there are certain configurations which do work, the question is whether they deliver a decent value to the customer.

That said, it's not an issue of Intel's chip reliability, it's an issue of platform stability on certain current non-Intel platforms.

I don't want to get into the details, it's not a pretty situation. There is much confusion surrounding this launch -- it's somewhat unbelievable.

[Shintai]

While I sort of agree, I think that's old news in the server market. Barcelona availaibility was poor post official launch, production cost per 1000 CPUs is high when factoring in yield and the die size, much worse than 45nm Penryn, but it started to appear in good volumes and sold out repeatedly after around 25th October. Before that it was hardly available to enterprise customers AFAIK, especially the 2350. Not in ones and twos but in volume orders. However, Penryn server is hardly being sold and supported by major MFGs because of bad platform support and instabilities, which gives AMD room for much leway. HP is one and Rahul stated on the 14th Nov why (his site):

OEMs still cant ship Barcelona servers.... IBM dont even exopect to be able before december. Thats why they had to accept the humilliation of the NON COMPLIANT on spec.org for their Barcelona server(s).

So no good volumes yet. There is a few popping up here and there. But lets face it. Even EE CPUs are in bigger volume.

Also your penryn server statement is BS. I already have RUNNING Harpertown servers from Dell! And they sell them like any other.

[JumpingJack]

While I sort of agree, I think that's old news in the server market. Barcelona availaibility was poor post official launch, production cost per 1000 CPUs is high when factoring in yield and the die size, much worse than 45nm Penryn, but it started to appear in good volumes and sold out repeatedly after around 25th October. Before that it was hardly available to enterprise customers AFAIK, especially the 2350. Not in ones and twos but in volume orders. However, Penryn server is hardly being sold and supported by major MFGs because of bad platform support and instabilities, which gives AMD room for much leway. HP is one and Rahul stated on the 14th Nov why (his site):

On the OEM side, yeah... the problem with this is in a third party chipset. There are plenty of other OEMs that will launch with a P35 chipset and no issues. Unfortunately, Intel will not be in mainstream with 45 nm yet, as they are not threatened by anything AMD has to put a cheaper 45 nm CPU into the market.

Rahul is a boutique maker, so high octane gear (which means SLI) is what he will deal in... it is unfortunate, but the problem is not the CPU but the chipset.

I don't think AMD has any room, thier top bin Quad is slower than Intel's lowest bin quad... dual core is still the mainstay for the moment, and the K8 is still at a huge deficit to 65 nm C2D.

This just isn't pretty.

[naokaji]

maybe i should have been more specific... i was thinking that the quadcores are pretty much limited to the highend market which means that most quadcore buyers have a big monitor, big monitor = high resolution = gpu limited

with gpu limitation the difference in games is small, in my opinion small enough that phenom could be an option for gamers if priced right.

but, yes, in general the Q6600 is the better deal, especially considering even my "crappy" B3 goes easily over 3Ghz

[JumpingJack]

maybe i should have been more specific... i was thinking that the quadcores are pretty much limited to the highend market which means that most quadcore buyers have a big monitor, big monitor = high resolution = gpu limited

with gpu limitation the difference in games is small, in my opinion small enough that phenom could be an option for gamers if priced right.

but, yes, in general the Q6600 is the better deal, especially considering even my "crappy" B3 goes easily over 3Ghz

See this is fair... however, at 250-300 price points, these are more mainstream... heck Gateway and a few others put out Quad retail units to the market not too long ago.

The problem is this... if you are asking the question -- which is computational the better CPU, then you must ensure that you are stressing the CPU and not some other component of the system. Granted, and I will agree with you, at 'realworld' conditions, at resolutions I would enjoy a Phenom or Q6600 will be the same FPS wise; however, if games is all I want I would rather throw 300 or 400 bucks at a console rather than 1000-1200 at a new computer.

Nope.... I enjoy gaming, as do most people, but a computer is more than just a glorified Xbox or PS3. I also like to encode home movies to DVD, photoshop my photos, rip music, etc. etc. Furthermore, if a good GPU does come out that does make a huge leap, I want to know whether or not my CPU will bottleneck it or not... hence, I would want the CPU that runs gaming code the fastest at the time I decide....

Jack

[knightwolf654]

there wont be much of a performance difference between the q6600 and the phenom, at least unless you monitor your fps like a hawk and write it down ever couple of sec you wont notice it, phenom is a nice cpu, it offers a option now, plus its compatible with the older am2 boards which makes it nice and easy to upgrade, intel all though there are a variety of options the still cost alot and if you want the most performance you need that new board.
its a good option to those who have a am2 board and don't want to get a new one, as well as mainstream makers will being producing rigs with these chips which will sell, cause out of all the people at my work at least they don't do any research.

[JumpingJack]

there wont be much of a performance difference between the q6600 and the phenom, at least unless you monitor your fps like a hawk and write it down ever couple of sec you wont notice it, phenom is a nice cpu, it offers a option now, plus its compatible with the older am2 boards which makes it nice and easy to upgrade, intel all though there are a variety of options the still cost alot and if you want the most performance you need that new board.
its a good option to those who have a am2 board and don't want to get a new one, as well as mainstream makers will being producing rigs with these chips which will sell, cause out of all the people at my work at least they don't do any research.

I don't think you would want to upgrade a 6000+ or higher for a Phenom though, as it is getting beat by that CPU in most benchmarks to.

However, if you are in for a complete new build then it will take some real thinking -- do you buy into a platform with a promise of getting better? It is really up to the purchaser, but for me as an example -- I will want performance even at the expense of a few bucks. For various reasons, if it comes to gaming then again... even if I won't notice the FPS now, there is the future where a new GPU or a new game comes that may want or need that extra oomph... again it is preference, it is clear you are made up on Phenom though it is a low end quad.

Here is an example: http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/561/amd-phenom-9600-et-9500/page16.php

I mean look at that disparity....

[knightwolf654]

which is the reason i am waiting for a later stepping, plus that comparing a 2.4 ghz phenom up against a 3.2 windsor, clock them the same and will see,
a later stepping would hopefully mean higher o/c if i remember correctly the x6800 was faster then the qe6700 or something of that sort. intel has had alot more time to correct the problems with their possess.

[savantu]

... However, Penryn server is hardly being sold and supported by major MFGs because of bad platform support and instabilities, which gives AMD room for much leway. HP is one and Rahul stated on the 14th Nov why (his site):

Huh ?

Have you ever seen a server ? Wtf does Nvidia desktop chipsets have to do with Xeon servers ? :down:
How much is Nvidia chipset out of the desktop volume ? 2-3&#37; ?
The remaining 97% are Intel chipsets and Penryn is rock solid and shipping on volume with them.

Everybody is selling 45nm Xeons , just as Intel can't make enough $1k Extreme Editions.


The chips are out, in fact sold out, and the only complaints that the partners on the floor have is that they can't get enough high-end parts, as Tier 1 gorillas are grabbing everything despite the $1K+ price tag per piece.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/13/penryns


We are raising our Q4 revenue and EPS estimates on Intel to reflect continued positive data points on PC unit growth and dominance of most segments of the market," said analyst Doug Freedman of American Technology Research, in a recent report.

"We believe Q4 is setting up for another solid period of PC unit growth, as evidenced by strong late Q3 chipset demand at Intel and data points out of companies including Asus, Acer, and Compal," he said, referring to the Taiwan ODM giants. "As a result, we believe the current quarter is likely tracking ahead of plan for PC component companies with Intel's fabs full and demand outstripping supply."

There's bad news for Intel's rivals. "We believe the company's server and notebook parts continue to dominate the OEM space as Barcelona is late to ramp and Santa Rosa continues to benefit from record notebook shipments," he said, referring to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s latest processor, dubbed Barcelona.

"We believe [Intel] will continue to dominate the high-end market as AMD has been late to deliver Barcelona/Phenom, both of which are struggling to deliver performance boosts due to a bad marriage of process technology and design," he added.

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203102713&pgno=2

[JumpingJack]

which is the reason i am waiting for a later stepping, plus that comparing a 2.4 ghz phenom up against a 3.2 windsor, clock them the same and will see,
a later stepping would hopefully mean higher o/c if i remember correctly the x6800 was faster then the qe6700 or something of that sort. intel has had alot more time to correct the problems with their possess.

Frankly, based on the news and data we have seen, this is the advice I would give any AMD seeking buyer, wait until B3 comes out... it is clear they need another spin.

[savantu]

Frankly, based on the news and data we have seen, this is the advice I would give any AMD seeking buyer, wait until B3 comes out... it is clear they need another spin.

To fix what ? Errata ?

Performance won't increase even if they spin it for 10 times more.The difference between B1,BA and B2 was solely in some people's heads.
Moreover , the wonder stepping B2 , which caused AMD engineers to "dance in the isles" is proven faulty when going over 2.3GHz.
And some said it could reach 3GHz.Even if you OC one , what's the chance to get random errors and lockups ?

By the time B3 is released ( late Q1 according to AMD , mid-late Q2 by our standards ) you're a few months away from Nehalem/45nm K10.

Since the 45nm K10 is a K10 shrink , I see no reason whatsoever why it would outperform a current Kentsfield per clock.I doubt it will reach higher frequencies too.
As most review sites note : there is no reason to buy a K10.Slower , hotter , same prices as yesterday's Kentsfield.

[JumpingJack]

To fix what ? Errata ?

Performance won't increase even if they spin it for 10 times more.The difference between B1,BA and B2 was solely in some people's heads.
Moreover , the wonder stepping B2 , which caused AMD engineers to "dance in the isles" is proven faulty when going over 2.3GHz.
And some said it could reach 3GHz.Even if you OC one , what's the chance to get random errors and lockups ?

By the time B3 is released ( late Q1 according to AMD , mid-late Q2 by our standards ) you're a few months away from Nehalem/45nm K10.

Since the 45nm K10 is a K10 shrink , I see no reason whatsoever why it would outperform a current Kentsfield per clock.I doubt it will reach higher frequencies too.
As most review sites note : there is no reason to buy a K10.Slower , hotter , same prices as yesterday's Kentsfield.


:) There is enough rumblings of problems this and problems that, that if someone was bent on AMD and Phenom and asking me should I buy now or wait, I would advise wait. Not because it would get any better, but man... if 2.4 GHz induces a bug (for what ever odd reason, from circuit logic stand point it does not make sense) .. then the 2.3 GHz is running near a cliff, and frankly I have been burned in the past with AMD pushing the limit of the spec so much so that the CPU I was using literally gave out, hence my advice to someone asking ;)

If someone were asking me, what should I get in general, right now that nod goes to Intel, of course -- runs cooler, more overclocking headroom, better chipsets, their slowest quad is faster than AMD's fastest quad, superior process technology-better made etc. etc.

What I am not able to do and what I am not going to do is try to convince knightwolf654 that Intel is a better choice, he most obviously has his mind set on a Phenom, plain and simple. That is his choice, if he wants to spend 280 bucks on a low end CPU it is his money he can do that... but he stated he will wait.. I simply agreed and that would be my advice :)

EDIT: Let me add to this... it is kinda funny to watch people argue that a new stepping will fix some performance ridden errata that will make a huge difference. I have followed the industry for 17 years now, and the point at which an release stepping showed a certain performance, no where have I seen subsequent steppings fix anything that has given major overhaul to the intrinsic per clock performance. At this stage, the architectural capability of K10 is fixed where it is, there is little more or less that AMD can do that will improve it with just a simple respin, other than may be getting L3 latency down. But 10 or 20&#37; for a errata fix??? Yeah, right -- pull the other leg and it will whistle 'jingle bells'.

[SKYMTL]

Yeah, we "threw" ours together in about three days....which is why it is a preview. I all reality we had NO help from AMD in any way, shape or form which is why we are not using many of AMD'd canned benchmarks. We weren't invited to Tahoe, we didn't talk to AMD....yadda yadda yadda...

Also note that our preview is done with a sample directly from the retail channel so this is the performance a consumer will most likely get. Miso banged this one out extremely quickly. Also, I personally have an Phenom 9500 which will be reviewed with the entire Spider platform in the coming weeks.

There are also a few other things that really MUST be said about the Phenom:

- Personally, I think this will mostly be used at a drop-in solution for AM2 users out there WHEN motherboard manufacturers get their BIOS out.

- Without a massive speed bump, AMD is on a wing and a prayer right now

- Speaking about performance....with these figures quad Crossfire is almost dead before it is officially released. Imagine the processor bottleneck we will see with four HD3870 cards teamed up with the Phenom? Ouch...

[GoThr3k]

not totally unexpected
the only bad division AMD has is its cpu division
they have great chipsit
they have good graphics cards (which do make money....,only 2m$ previous quarter,this one will be better)
and they have mediocre cpu's

if they would have at least matched kentsfield they would have a tremendously strong platform,too bad it didnt happen

[red]

For suckers only...

[Miwo]

Pretty sad to see this. Its like the runaway R600, but many times worse in comparison.

They had to release now because any longer would mean head on competition with midpriced Yorkfields and Wolfdales, which would just be slaughter. The price advantage is pretty much offset by what you have to pay for the 790FX boards, so its only really practical for those who already have AM2 systems.

Looks like it was a good idea to purchase ATI after all :)

[ryboto]

Pretty sad to see this. Its like the runaway R600, but many times worse in comparison.

They had to release now because any longer would mean head on competition with midpriced Yorkfields and Wolfdales, which would just be slaughter. The price advantage is pretty much offset by what you have to pay for the 790FX boards, so its only really practical for those who already have AM2 systems.

Looks like it was a good idea to purchase ATI after all :)

what are the 790/770/780 boards going to cost?

[awdrifter]

It's the cache. With only 4x512 meg of L2 cache that actually is fast (the L3 is slow) barc could never match c2q/york. If it had 8 meg L2, I think barc would be 10&#37; faster clock for clock than conroe, and just slightly better than penryn (excepting special cases where the divide latency and shifter really helps penryn). Increasing the L3 won't help much. Since the roadmap doesn't call for increased L2 cache size and we know Barc won't clock well for 2008, AMD will remain well behind Intel performance for all of 2008 (at least) and with Nehalem coming out, all of 2009. The gap isn't large though, and AMD will be fine selling a little cheaper than Intel. Too bad the spent a lot of money going native QC.

I also think the cache is the problem, but a different one. The L3 cache is probably what holding back the clockspeed on the K10. AMD's 65nm tech is not that bad, the Brisbane 5000 BEs can hit over 3ghz easily. I think what AMD needs now is not another respin, but a revised design. They should scrap the L3 cache and just increase the L2 cache to 1mb per core. They did it with the K8, so we could reasonably assume they would be able to do that to the K10. Then we should be seeing at least 2.8+ ghz K10s.

[Hornet331]

gigabyte DQ6 790fx is ~200€ but there are cheaper 790fx ranging from 130-180€

[JVguest]

No, cache dont benefit K8 or K10 arch much. Also the main reason for Core 2 to have so much cache is to counter the much lower memory bandwidth and hide the latency.

Again, check K8 512Kb vs 1024kb. And use 90nms for both to compare with.

Wrong on the first part. K10 has twice the SSE throughput of K8 and improved IPC (well, somewhat, because it's doesn't have large enough L2 cache), the two aren't comparable. P3 (support 4 way SIMD SSE) wouldn't gain much from going from 1 meg to 8 meg L2 either. The purpose of L2 cache is to feed data to the CPU at a high rate and at low latency <8 ns). Even with a hypothetical triple channel DDR2, AMD's IMC + small L2 cache will be far slower than a large L2 cache, that's connected with a 256 bit bus to the CPU. ;) The most important thing is low latency under <8 ns on the working data sets used in typical software, although you are right that the prefetchers and large L2 do reduce the amount of time core 2 spends accessing memory.

[Shintai]

Wrong on the first part. K10 has twice the SSE throughput of K8 and improved IPC (well, somewhat, because it's doesn't have large enough L2 cache), the two aren't comparable. P3 (support 4 way SIMD SSE) wouldn't gain much from going from 1 meg to 8 meg L2 either. The purpose of L2 cache is to feed data to the CPU at a high rate and at low latency <8 ns). Even with a hypothetical triple channel DDR2, AMD's IMC + small L2 cache will be far slower than a large L2 cache, that's connected with a 256 bit bus to the CPU. ;) The most important thing is low latency under <8 ns on the working data sets used in typical software, although you are right that the prefetchers and large L2 do reduce the amount of time core 2 spends accessing memory.

If that was true, we would see whole other SSE scenarios on 1 and 2MB Core 2s. In short, you are wrong. And I&#180;m pretty sure AMDs engineers would have done this already if there was a valid reason. But there aint. I know it would be nice if there was an easy killer solution. But it doesnt exist, period!

[freeloader]

Yeah, the industry won't let it happen. Large OEMs will shove these into low end boxes and sell plenty, as a result AMD will continue with volume.

There are a few critical problems I see for AMD at the moment.

a) The die size is huge and the margins will be small as they must price these to be competitive, they did not regain any pricing leverage.

b) Yields, despite what AMD tells it's investors, are not great -- Barcey is still a no show, and the initial reports is that the availability of Phenom will be scant.

c) Clock speed.... clock speed.... clock speed. While AMD down played it's importance, it is actually still part of the performance equation (Performance = IPC*Clockspeed) and the poor launch speeds is really hurting, the must work to get these up to help boalster the ASPs.

Only one problem with your statement, "as a result, AMD will continue with volume". That's not looking to be very good at this time. AMD needs to ditch SOI like a hooker ditches a mouthful, if you know what I mean. It's caused nothing but grief at the 65nm node.

[Yakyb]

Finally availible (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=6&subid=1033)

Phenom availible here only as pre order tho

[naokaji]

Finally availible (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=6&subid=1033)

Phenom availible here only as pre order tho

too expensive though.... 50£ (100$) more than Q6600 in same store.... i hope it drops once its really avalaible and the only to list it gouging ends.

[Donnie27]

From seeing these results, AMD should've scrapped the native quad core and just MCM two Brisbanes instead of releasing this. The cost of production should be lower, and the performance wouldn't be too much worse, it might be even better because Brisbanes can hit 3ghz easily.

A point I tried to make 8 months ago. I've said all alone that if they had something, they'd show it.

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Its actually only &#163;10-15 more expensive, but thats enough to not really make it a viable option. How many people have C2Ds on mobos that will take C2Qs? Probably more than people who have an AM2 mobo. AMD does have a nice platform atm with the 790FX chipset, but IMHO doesnt have the CPU horsepower to go with it atm, a shame really.

[justapost]

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_15331_15332%5E15348,00.html

AMD Phenom™ Benchmarks in process
Dumdidum

Looking at PCPerspectives Review 9600 uses less power in indle and under load, all others show higer power consumption. :confused:

About pricing, two sources in germany saying, amd announced the following pricing (OEM, 1000) in warsaw:

9500 - 169€
9600 - 190€

Onlineshop's have higher prices 9500 (~ 220€), 9600 (~ 250€) atm, i assume they will drop soon below q6600 prices (~ 230€).

[Donnie27]

If you were looking for a changing of the guard today it's just not going to happen. Phenom is, clock for clock, slower than Core 2 and the chips aren't yet yielding well enough to boost clock speeds above what Intel is capable of. While AMD just introduced its first 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz quad-core CPUs today, Intel previewed its first 3.2GHz quad-core chips. We were expecting Intel to retain the high end performance crown, but also expected AMD to chip away at the lower end of the quad-core market - today's launch confirms that Intel is still the king of the quad-core market.


Says it best and he could have left out most of what what said after-wards. I wonder what AMD Fantoy Wes Fink would have written?

[BeardyMan]

pretty strange that now, AMD phenom is faster afteral in Crysis cpu bench.
Link (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=9)

2.3ghz >2.4
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd&#37;20phenom%20launch_111907121132/16064.png

While that expreview dude showed us dramatic resulst from phenom in crysis? serious whte do i need to believe? :shrug:

[justapost]

A few AMD slides

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=943&w=l
Good to know AM3 chips will work in AM2 Platforms.

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=933&w=o

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=931&w=o

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=932&w=o

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=935&w=l

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=936&w=l

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=937&w=l

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=934&w=l

What is a good P35 board below 100€ in terms of power consumtion? ASUS P5K SE ?
I want to buy one together with an q6600, to have someting to compare with 770/9500.

[Tonucci]

Well...Its not the end of the world for AMD. The old K8s are faster than penryn in supercomputer with tons of CPUs, so K10 should do really well in this market, theres alot of money to be made outside of desktop parts.

As for overclockers/gamers, its a no brainer....

EDIT: Weird thing is, it seems like AMD has the upper hand in minimum FPS in some games. Maybe its the L3 cache helping ?

[Periander6]

The time for slides, canned "previews", no touch demos, cherrypicked benches, simulated nonexistent parts, wishful thinking sandbagging and miracle dancing in the aisles steppings just around the corner is over. This is a launched product.

The facts are that clock for clock K10 is 10&#37; slower than Kentsfield, the top speed is only 2.3GHz, the power numbers suck too, and it's priced too high for how it performs. It's AMD's Prescott. Full stop.

[n91htmare]

How did AMD slides put gaming at 110&#37; when in all tests that are not GPU bound we have seen the Intel leap ahead.
at most EVEN ON AMD SLIDES which are obviously Biased, we only see phenom ahead by average 3% lol

[BeardyMan]

How did AMD slides put gaming at 110% when in all tests that are not GPU bound we have seen the Intel leap aheard.

probably because their entire platform is fined tuned at each other.

[freeloader]

The time for slides, canned "previews", no touch demos, cherrypicked benches, simulated nonexistent parts, wishful thinking sandbagging and miracle dancing in the aisles steppings just around the corner is over. This is a launched product.

The facts are that clock for clock K10 is 10% slower than Kentsfield, the top speed is only 2.3GHz, the power numbers suck too, and it's priced too high for how it performs. It's AMD's Prescott. Full stop.


:up: :clap:

[happychappy]

Now we have to wait for B3:rolleyes:

[Epsilon84]

Now we have to wait for B3:rolleyes:

Oh, the new 'dancing in the aisles' stepping, right? :rofl:

[Pacha]

The time for slides, canned "previews", no touch demos, cherrypicked benches, simulated nonexistent parts, wishful thinking sandbagging and miracle dancing in the aisles steppings just around the corner is over. This is a launched product.

The facts are that clock for clock K10 is 10% slower than Kentsfield, the top speed is only 2.3GHz, the power numbers suck too, and it's priced too high for how it performs. It's AMD's Prescott. Full stop.

QFT :clap:

[savantu]

The time for slides, canned "previews", no touch demos, cherrypicked benches, simulated nonexistent parts, wishful thinking sandbagging and miracle dancing in the aisles steppings just around the corner is over. This is a launched product.

The facts are that clock for clock K10 is 10% slower than Kentsfield, the top speed is only 2.3GHz, the power numbers suck too, and it's priced too high for how it performs. It's AMD's Prescott. Full stop.

Any bets on how AMD will handlem a Prescott-like disaster ?

[fiskov]

Very disappointing.. Been an AMD "only" user since the K6-2 300 days (not a fan boy just never had problems so always stuck with them.)

Yet the time has come, i need a new PC and i need the best and AMD simply is not that anymore.
adios AMD :(

[SKYMTL]

Any bets on how AMD will handlem a Prescott-like disaster ?

First nail....meet Mr. Coffin....but I don't think this will be a disaster of that magnitude. Not in the least.

[happychappy]

Oh, the new 'dancing in the aisles' stepping, right? :rofl:

Yeah, for sure, then it will perform 2x better than a Q6600:up: :rofl: :ROTF:

[Donnie27]

With the slowest model costing from $222 to $235 US Dollars, yes they do suck! 9600 isn't cheaper than Q6600 that at least one VAR offered me for $270 and yes my Board is compat with it;)

http://www.keenzo.com/showproduct.asp?M=AMD&ID=1167123&ref=GB

Lowest price is still a joke!

Doesn't matter, they'll sell well in this market anyway. There are enough folks that will still but it and think they're great.

[savantu]

AMD's Phenom - For suckers only

I was quite interested in AMD’s Phenom quad-core CPU, that is, until I read some early reviews of the processor. Now I’ve come to the conclusion that you’d have to be a sucker to be an early adopter of AMD’s new quad-core line.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=946

[savantu]

Oh, the new 'dancing in the aisles' stepping, right? :rofl:

Where is informal,DoubleZero and the rest of the gang to tell us how we should wait for B3 and then see the light and "dance in the aisles" ?
Or even better , we should wait for Shanghai , the 45nm K10 , maybe that one will close the IPC gap with Kentsfield!
2 years later , but hey , it's a True Quad Core !!

[John600rr]

Where is informal,DoubleZero and the rest of the gang to tell us how we should wait for B3 and then see the light and "dance in the aisles"

Too busy editing all of their posts? ;)

[Shintai]

pretty strange that now, AMD phenom is faster afteral in Crysis cpu bench.
Link (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=9)

2.3ghz >2.4
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd&#37;20phenom%20launch_111907121132/16064.png

While that expreview dude showed us dramatic resulst from phenom in crysis? serious whte do i need to believe? :shrug:

First of all they look near GPU limited. See the very small scaling.

Secondly, the Q6600 uses high latency DDR3. DDR3 is first useful for Intel with high OCs or Nehalem. You could have used DDR2-533/667 with about same effect.

Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) Phenom
Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20 (1GB x 2) Core 2

[Brother Esau]

What happened to the Mighty Power Envelope that AMD has been pushing with K10 development:shrug:

[JumpingJack]

A few AMD slides

http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/file.php?n=934&w=l

What is a good P35 board below 100€ in terms of power consumtion? ASUS P5K SE ?
I want to buy one together with an q6600, to have someting to compare with 770/9500.

Wow, that's some doctoring.

[informal]

Where is informal,DoubleZero and the rest of the gang to tell us how we should wait for B3 and then see the light and "dance in the aisles" ?
Or even better , we should wait for Shanghai , the 45nm K10 , maybe that one will close the IPC gap with Kentsfield!
2 years later , but hey , it's a True Quad Core !!

Actually,i was right saying K10 is buggy :).From the recent (now official) news we know it is the L3/NB that has speed path problems-hence the delay for >2.3Ghz versions.
Also,AMD originally planed to run IMC and cores at the same clocks,but we know now they had to settle down with rather large clock deficit wrt NB clocks.

And,actually it's quite funny to see you intel fanboys/marketeers here gloating over 2 low clocked Phenoms and their performance :).Quite a few Prescott-like/clueless comments made me laugh hard :D.

Savantu,you are quite a knowledgeable guy,such a shame you are so heavily intel biased that it overshadows that quality of yours :p:

[Jethro]

Holy shiite theres alot of negativity surrounding this new cpu! Slower than intel lol whats new? Phenom will still sell and probably sell well.

Phenom is still a nice drop in replacement for any dual core am2 machines out there that will benifit from more smp power without a complete rebuild and it only stands to get better bottom line. I commend AMD for moving towards scalability and power considerations. Phenom will get faster, the new platform ROCKS and the new ATI products are awesome!! I think ALL of you naysayers are jumping the gun here.

I think AMD could have some nice things in store for me personally since i dont care about getting a quad and all! Im very excited (and in no rush) to upgrade to this new 700 series chipset, 3800 graphics and a next gen am2 part. Applly water cooling some serouis volts and voila compared to my current via based 939 setup it'l prolly knock me socks off! Mmmm SPIDER!!!! I may be in a minority but i simply cannot wait to try out that new overdrive software!

Since i've never owned a c2d system b/c there so dam expensive i wont know what im missing !!!!

However much slower ill be then a pricier Intel system, i'll still be folding, browsing and kicking your azz in some game some where just fine! Tis a great time to be a geek!!! Even an AMD one.

:)

[Epsilon84]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=946

WTF! When I saw blogs.zdnet in the link I was thinking "Oh, George Ou is gonna have a field day with this" but its not even him!!! :eek: :ROTF:

Who the hell is Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, get the n00b out and get George back, LOL! :up:

[Periander6]

the new platform ROCKS

Really?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13628


Despite being the first new enthusiast chipset for AM2 processors in more than a year and a half, the 790FX relies on a dated SB600 south bridge chip whose limited connectivity options hardly befit a cutting-edge enthusiast platform. The SB600's comparatively poor PCI and USB performance only make matters worse. With a new SB700 south bridge due to arrive early next year on a second wave of 790FX boards, it's hard to get excited about current implementations.

The first crop of 790FX boards certainly has its share of problems, too. Gigabyte's GA-MA790FX-DQ6 suffers from a number of BIOS-related issues that really need to be fixed before we would even consider recommending the board. And it's not like this is a pre-release product whose kinks are still being worked out; the DQ6 was selling online before the 790FX officially launched. The DQ6 also suffers from a poor graphics slot layout and alarmingly high power consumption given the 790FX's 10W TDP. It's not cheap, either. With street prices currently hovering around $270, the DQ6 costs nearly as much as the fastest Phenom you can buy.

Our problems with 790FX motherboards haven't been limited to Gigabyte, either. We haven't yet had the opportunity to test MSI's riff on the Spider platform, but we've found Asus' M3A32-MVP Deluxe to have numerous BIOS-related issues and questionable stability. The fact that the top two mobo makers can't get their initial 790FX offerings dialed for the chipset's launch doesn't give us a lot of faith in the platform.

I'm not even convinced there will be much demand for a high-end Phenom chipset. The processor's performance isn't compelling enough to inspire current Core 2 users to jump ship, and those running Socket AM2 processors will probably be more inclined to drop a Phenom into their existing motherboards rather than going out and buying new ones.

In the end, the 790FX is a bandwidth-rich new north bridge chip held back by a dated south bridge and flaky motherboard implementations. AMD will have to do better if it expects the Spider platform to take off with enthusiasts. In its current state, we simply can't recommend the 790FX.

[Inteleron]

LOL @ Gigabyte and Asus. Wait for the real manufacturers to release ther boards. DFI & Biostar ;)

[informal]

WTF! When I saw blogs.zdnet in the link I was thinking "Oh, George Ou is gonna have a field day with this" but its not even him!!! :eek: :ROTF:

Who the hell is Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, get the n00b out and get George back, LOL! :up:

Hehe,i think Georgie boy is currently busy writing his new essay on Phenom :p: .
We should be expecting it shortly,with all the "powerpoint slide analysis" from the official presentation :p: .
Stay tuned :D

[Jethro]

ZOMG the first revision with a DATED southbridge sucks kind of.. Still better then what i got by a mile even if i dont wait for the other then first revision boards... Bleh.. Techreport are very biased to IMO.

[John600rr]

Holy shiite theres alot of negativity surrounding this new cpu! Slower than intel lol whats new? Phenom will still sell and probably sell well.

Phenom is still a nice drop in replacement for any dual core am2 machines out there that will benifit from more smp power without a complete rebuild and it only stands to get better bottom line. I commend AMD for moving towards scalability and power considerations. Phenom will get faster, the new platform ROCKS and the new ATI products are awesome!! I think ALL of you naysayers are jumping the gun here.

I think AMD could have some nice things in store for me personally since i dont care about getting a quad and all! Im very excited (and in no rush) to upgrade to this new 700 series chipset, 3800 graphics and a next gen am2 part. Applly water cooling some serouis volts and voila compared to my current via based 939 setup it'l prolly knock me socks off! Mmmm SPIDER!!!! I may be in a minority but i simply cannot wait to try out that new overdrive software!

Since i've never owned a c2d system b/c there so dam expensive i wont know what im missing !!!!

However much slower ill be then a pricier Intel system, i'll still be folding, browsing and kicking your azz in some game some where just fine! Tis a great time to be a geek!!! Even an AMD one.

:)

Man, what are you smokin'?

Intel stuff to expensive? But you want a new 700 series motherboard, 3800 GPU and a Phenom (AM2+) processor? Not to mention water cooling? AND your interested in Spider? Wow.

Intel parts are a bargain for how long their performance has held up. If you were truly interested in and concerned about price, you should have invested in a C2D system at launch so you didn't have to worry about AM2 and Phenom.

[savantu]

Actually,i was right saying K10 is buggy :).From the recent (now official) news we know it is the L3/NB that has speed path problems-hence the delay for >2.3Ghz versions.
Also,AMD originally planed to run IMC and cores at the same clocks,but we know now they had to settle down with rather large clock deficit wrt NB clocks.

And,actually it's quite funny to see you intel fanboys/marketeers here gloating over 2 low clocked Phenoms and their performance :).Quite a few Prescott-like/clueless comments made me laugh hard :D.

Savantu,you are quite a knowledgeable guy,such a shame you are so heavily intel biased that it overshadows that quality of yours :p:

Of yes , you've seen K10s true problems months ago.Too bad you failed to pass them to us...IMO , it's not the IMC , nor the NB.The process is to blame along with the slow L3.Probably other trade offs are involved , we'll see those when they test latencies/through output for various instructions.

Haven't they invented a pill for the Fanboy Denial Syndrome yet ?

As for your last comment , it equally applies to you.Leave apart the fanboyism and look at the real situation.

[Jethro]

If intel guys are so content with there systems why to the feel so compelled to have 1000's of post in AMD forums? Bored?

I DIDNT buy c2d b/c it was pricey but also because nothing i've been doing with my box has been to slow. I need more ram for cad now and a new vid card for some of the newer games now so im compelled to upgrade. SPIDER will suit just fine and when the dust settles prolly be cheaper yet.

Ultimately it will be a plenty FAST setup for my needs. Im sorry that you dont agree with me not giving a ratz azz about 10&#37; +/- I wan't FUTURE proof a scalability! With AMD i dont have to worriy about buying a new motherboard whenever a new CPU comes out lol. I've had 3 cpu's in my current board over the course of 2 years. Thats along time to have the same board/platform!

[Flambo]

Wow ... these "benchmarks" are truly awful for AMD ... what happen to all the claims about 10 - 20 % higher IPC, 40% higher FP performance, dancing in the aisles, etc. This actually looks worse then the 2900XT launch. I had hoped for at least parity in IPC but we have 10-15% less IPC and can't even ramp beyond 2.3 right now. For the foreseeable future I will have to (continue to) recommend Intel to anyone who want to build or upgrade. As soon as the slower Intel 45nm quad parts (2008 Q1?) are out the slaughter will become a total massacre. This may serious injure AMD to point of never being competitive again. Perhaps not even in the budget range as that would just bleed them dry until they are dead. I feel like AMD has not being honest with the public for the past year and it doesn't feel good. I had uneasy feeling ever since they were so tight lipped about the K10 performance when Intel openly invited people to check out their systems. Too bad, continued competition would have been good for the consumers. Perhaps AMD can scratch out a living making budget graphics card and specialized embedded processors. Wait, Intel can't let them die; they'll really be accused of being a monopoly. Maybe they'll be like Bill Gate when he gave Apple a lifeline. Or they'll just enjoy cutting the heart out of AMD and fend off the feds with all the profits they'll make (buy lawyers.) AMD had their chance and blew it. What have they been doing for the last 3 years? Firing Hector will be like shooting the pilot of the plane after it has already crashed and killed everyone onboard.

[YukonTrooper]

If intel guys are so content with there systems why to the feel so compelled to have 1000's of post in AMD forums? Bored?

I DIDNT buy c2d b/c it was pricey but also because nothing i've been doing with my box has been to slow. I need more ram for cad now and a new vid card for some of the newer games now so im compelled to upgrade. SPIDER will suit just fine and when the dust settles prolly be cheaper yet.

Ultimately it will be a plenty FAST setup for my needs. Im sorry that you dont agree with me not giving a ratz azz about 10&#37; +/- I wan't FUTURE proof a scalability! With AMD i dont have to worriy about buying a new motherboard whenever a new CPU comes out lol. I've had 3 cpu's in my current board over the course of 2 years. Thats along time to have the same board/platform!
I think you need to wake up from your AMD pipe dream. I wish for the same things as you but lets be realistic here. AMD has no place in the enthusiast market ATM. They lose in all major categories: price/performance, performance, power/performance.

I don't care about this "SPIDER" technology either. Some neat features perhaps but mostly marketing IMHO. They can call it Uber Duper Super Snake Slaying @$$ Kicker and I still wouldn't buy it.

[John600rr]

Ultimately it will be a plenty FAST setup for my needs. Im sorry that you dont agree with me not giving a ratz azz about 10&#37; +/- I wan't FUTURE proof a scalability! With AMD i dont have to worriy about buying a new motherboard whenever a new CPU comes out lol. I've had 3 cpu's in my current board over the course of 2 years. Thats along time to have the same board/platform!

So basically you're willing to spend more money on an AMD platform vs an Intel platform even though it will have maybe less performance? (10% according to you). Do you know what that equals? Truest fanboy.

Also, I have 0 posts in the AMD section.

Oh yeah, I've had my board/CPU for about a year and half. You've gone through three CPU's in that time (+6 months) and you're saying Intel is too pricey? And I wonder who's performs better.. (your 3 vs my 1).

Come back down to earth man.

[justapost]

I DIDNT buy c2d b/c it was pricey but also because nothing i've been doing with my box has been to slow. I need more ram for cad now and a new vid card for some of the newer games now so im compelled to upgrade. SPIDER will suit just fine and when the dust settles prolly be cheaper yet.

Ultimately it will be a plenty FAST setup for my needs. Im sorry that you dont agree with me not giving a ratz azz about 10% +/- I wan't FUTURE proof a scalability! With AMD i dont have to worriy about buying a new motherboard whenever a new CPU comes out lol. I've had 3 cpu's in my current board over the course of 2 years. Thats along time to have the same board/platform!
QFT.:up:

To get that 10% perfomance gain intel claims you need latest mobo, ram and software, way too expensive.

[GAR]

Amd :down:

[JumpingJack]

QFT.:up:

To get that 10&#37; perfomance gain intel claims you need latest mobo, ram and software, way too expensive.

That's not true... I bought a MB 6 months ago that will accept the 1333 Mhz proc... drop in. In fact I have two boards that will take it... both Asus, purchased shortly after C2D launched. And compared to the Phenom I can expect a heck of alot more than 10%

I also bought an AM2 board with a 60 dollar throw away 3600+, but heck I can overclock that 3600+ to out perform the Phenom in most DT, so that drop in will not occur.

And the software that is getting the 4-10% (we have ahd this discussion) has been on the market now for almost a year in some cases (CS3 launched several months ago, and was purchased then when it launched).... The ones I am interested in of course I already own.

You are blowin' a lot of smoke in the forums.

[Epsilon84]

QFT.:up:

To get that 10% perfomance gain intel claims you need latest mobo, ram and software, way too expensive.

I didn't know Q6600 @ 3.6GHz or Yorkfield @ 4GHz+ was only 10% faster than a buggy Phenom @ 2.6 - 3.0GHz max. :ROTF:

[Donnie27]

Originally Posted by justapost
QFT.

To get that 10% perfomance gain intel claims you need latest mobo, ram and software, way too expensive.

:rofl: :ROTF: mine is 16 months old and compat with Q6600 and Penryn. No, there isn't a performance hit.


I didn't know Q6600 @ 3.6GHz or Yorkfield @ 4GHz+ was only 10% faster than a buggy Phenom @ 2.6 - 3.0GHz max. :ROTF:

QFT!

[JVguest]

If that was true, we would see whole other SSE scenarios on 1 and 2MB Core 2s. In short, you are wrong. And I´m pretty sure AMDs engineers would have done this already if there was a valid reason. But there aint. I know it would be nice if there was an easy killer solution. But it doesnt exist, period!

No, the reason AMD couldn't put more transistors (more cache) is because the barcelona is already consuming too much power @ 2.3 GHz (leakage) as it is. Their process technology has more leakage than Intel's at 65 nm. YOU are wrong about the cache, and you have not backed up your statement at all. Intel has put lots of cache on core 2 based cpu's because they CAN while remaining within their target TDP, and AMD CAN NOT. IMC does NOT alleviate the need for good/large caches to any significant degree. IMC helps in FAR LESS cases than a large and fast cache. The only good thing about K8/K10 is that the cores can communicate with each other at full speed, although it seems that isn't quite true either. ;)

[GoThr3k]

I don't care about this "SPIDER" technology either. Some neat features perhaps but mostly marketing IMHO. They can call it Uber Duper Super Snake Slaying @$$ Kicker and I still wouldn't buy it.

spider isnt a technology,its a platform :rolleyes:
it doesnt have any features,its a cpu + mobo + gpu

[Donnie27]

Man, what are you smokin'?

Intel stuff to expensive? But you want a new 700 series motherboard, 3800 GPU and a Phenom (AM2+) processor? Not to mention water cooling? AND your interested in Spider? Wow.

Intel parts are a bargain for how long their performance has held up. If you were truly interested in and concerned about price, you should have invested in a C2D system at launch so you didn't have to worry about AM2 and Phenom.

Yea, especially since AM2 is only about 2 months older than 965 LOL! I got a local bud saying the thing but bought about 3 AMD based since systems since I bought Conroe. He went from 939-->AM2--->AM2+ and he'll get less performance after spending a lot of money. He's not bitter says he can't wait for shipping Phenom, slower or not.

No processors have been more expensive than X2 and FX across the board prior to Conroe changing that trend=P I do fear that Supply and Demand will dictate that Intel or the VAR's will have to raise prices. I'd hoped AMD would make a better showing:(

[JumpingJack]

No, the reason AMD couldn't put more transistors (more cache) is because the barcelona is already consuming too much power @ 2.3 GHz (leakage) as it is. Their process technology has more leakage than Intel's at 65 nm. YOU are wrong about the cache, and you have not backed up your statement at all. Intel has put lots of cache on core 2 based cpu's because they CAN while remaining within their target TDP, and AMD CAN NOT. IMC does NOT alleviate the need for good/large caches to any significant degree. IMC helps in FAR LESS cases than a large and fast cache. The only good thing about K8/K10 is that the cores can communicate with each other at full speed, although it seems that isn't quite true either. ;)

I wonder why AMD could find a way to get away with axing all thier 1megx2 processors early on?? Several benchmarking runs have shown that the IMC allows smaller caches... makes sense as the IMC addresses the very short fall that cache is intended to buffer...

Shantai is not wrong, you are not quite wrong either... but AMD's IMC and cache size were design decisions to balance out larger cache against more cost effective smaller die (as they cannot keep up in terms of shrinks and nodes with Intel). It worked for a while.

[Shintai]

No, the reason AMD couldn't put more transistors (more cache) is because the barcelona is already consuming too much power @ 2.3 GHz (leakage) as it is. Their process technology has more leakage than Intel's at 65 nm. YOU are wrong about the cache, and you have not backed up your statement at all. Intel has put lots of cache on core 2 based cpu's because they CAN while remaining within their target TDP, and AMD CAN NOT. IMC does NOT alleviate the need for good/large caches to any significant degree. IMC helps in FAR LESS cases than a large and fast cache. The only good thing about K8/K10 is that the cores can communicate with each other at full speed, although it seems that isn't quite true either. ;)

Cache dont use much power....On the old P4 Xeons with 16MB L3 it was 0.75W per MB at 3.73Ghz if im not mistaken. Logic is the heavy power consumer. Not cache. You can also see on thermal charts on dies that the cache areas are relatively cold.

You can also compare the power consumption of different cache size chips of the same archtecture.

I doubt another 5W or so wouldnt tip the iceberg if it added 5-10&#37; more performance.

[Jethro]

Will the Phenom FX have the unlocked multiplier?

[JumpingJack]

Will the Phenom FX have the unlocked multiplier?

According to some reviews, AMD might be releasing an unlocked 9600 or 9500 before the end of the year... but to answer your question, yeah... the reports are that the FX will be unlocked too.

Though you may want to check around the forum RE the TLB errata, even if you get it unlocked there is no guarantee you will be able to get a good clock out of it.... the overclocking data is showing sporadic success, and more or less pretty poor, if you are lucky 2.8 GHz and on rare occasion 3.0 GHz... some report they can't get the 2.3 above 2.35 GHz. (See firingsquads review).

[justapost]

That's not true... I bought a MB 6 months ago that will accept the 1333 Mhz proc... drop in. In fact I have two boards that will take it... both Asus, purchased shortly after C2D launched. And compared to the Phenom I can expect a heck of alot more than 10&#37;
You wil not be able to use DDR3 1600 together with penry i assume. For nehalem a new board will be required 2009.


I also bought an AM2 board with a 60 dollar throw away 3600+, but heck I can overclock that 3600+ to out perform the Phenom in most DT, so that drop in will not occur.
After a bios update my asus m2a-vm supports DDR2 1066. According to amd slides 45nm am3 parts will work in am2 boards.
Looking at current benchmarks an phenom update might not be usefull at the moment, things might look different with b3's or 45nm parts next year.
In normal office workloads and with not up to date software I do not believe you'll get even close to 10%.
But i plan to get both platforms and create my own benchmarks using HP's loadrunner tool to find the best platform for my companies needs.
We run alot of old celeron based workstations at work, last year i started to buy am2 platforms, there was no need for more calculation power but having two cores at a little lower power consumtion (most of the time those workstations run more or less idle) is a nice thing in terms of responsibility . I'm happy to see that I will be able to upgrade processors till 2009 on those platforms, just in case more power is needed. I prefere to run the same platform on all workstations because it simplifies servicing.

I didn't know Q6600 @ 3.6GHz or Yorkfield @ 4GHz+ was only 10% faster than a buggy Phenom @ 2.6 - 3.0GHz max. :ROTF:
I don't run my system overclocked all day, from my perspective it's a waste of energy. I plan to test enegry efficiency with over and underclocked platforms to verify my allegations.

Hope you guys can understand that in my case of pc usage 10% more performance and overclocking cappabilities do not matter and why I'm still happy with amd's.

[YukonTrooper]

spider isnt a technology,its a platform :rolleyes:
it doesnt have any features,its a cpu + mobo + gpu
I'm sure it's been quoted "technology" before, probably even by AMD. No reason to get technical about it, I'm sure people knew what I meant. At any rate it's horse manure.

[JumpingJack]

You wil not be able to use DDR3 1600 together with penry i assume. For nehalem a new board will be required 2009.

After a bios update my asus m2a-vm supports DDR2 1066. According to amd slides 45nm am3 parts will work in am2 boards.
Looking at current benchmarks an phenom update might not be usefull at the moment, things might look different with b3's or 45nm parts next year.
In normal office workloads and with not up to date software I do not believe you'll get even close to 10&#37;.
But i plan to get both platforms and create my own benchmarks using HP's loadrunner tool to find the best platform for my companies needs.
We run alot of old celeron based workstations at work, last year i started to buy am2 platforms, there was no need for more calculation power but having two cores at a little lower power consumtion (most of the time those workstations run more or less idle) is a nice thing in terms of responsibility . I'm happy to see that I will be able to upgrade processors till 2009 on those platforms, just in case more power is needed. I prefere to run the same platform on all workstations because it simplifies servicing.

I don't run my system overclocked all day, from my perspective it's a waste of energy. I plan to test enegry efficiency with over and underclocked platforms to verify my allegations.

Are you Shakirou under an alias???

Nahh.. seriously, why would I want DDR3-1600 -- it doesn't do much, Intel's caching tech is clearly spectacular, uber memory is not needed for uber performance.

[hersounds]

Here I leave my contribution to the people who speak Spanish, is review tom's hardware translated.


19/11 Amd Phenom Tom's Spanish Review

http://foros.maximopc.org/showthread.php?t=42151

[justapost]

Are you Shakirou under an alias???
Who?
You did not get it i guess. Glad your happy with you intel platform.

And don't call me dude or smoke blower if you have a problem with my statements, actualy my surename is achim and the picture is authentic.

[JumpingJack]

Who?
You did not get it i guess. Glad your happy with you intel platform.

And don't call me dude or smoke blower if you have a problem with my statements, actualy my surename is achim and the picture is authentic.

Ok my apologies.

However, the staunch position I take is because you are misrepresenting data and facts. Look, Phenom is not a bad CPU, it is not a Prescott, it did in fact improve over their prior core... just not enough.

But to bumfoosul the data, like you need a whole new MB for a Yorkfield, well that is plain wrong. Claiming only 1-5&#37; with the data clearly shows otherwise is wrong. Stating you need DDR3-1600 to get better performance is wrong. All your statements completely contradict the data.

Edit: For reference, this is shakirou ... he practices the same tactics: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/597/13/

[KTE]

My comments were based on experience of my work place bosses not just anecdotes. Its a government ran hospital. They contacted Intel Server Business Managment and one equivalent at AMD, as most corporations do. This was around September 5th. One at AMD replied very well mannered and straight away to come down with a test system to show them what they can offer, inside a week. The guy at Intel could not do so and gave a date 3 weeks later for Tigerton demo. The AMD Manager eventually booked an appointment to visit with a few test systems running software the work place needed. AMD reps promised that the 2360 SE will soon be available by December to them and showed them the demo of this system and SPEC figures. The work place IT management departement waited, they are in touch with all the major OEM vendors to find out as they needed ~100 16 core systems and ~150 8 core setups at that time. The work place was mainly after the 2350, which was in short supply for volume orders. AMD Manager stated to wait till October for more volumes, as they were short. Come 16th-October they received contact and full supply of K10h they wanted. Penryn and Tigerton however, which they were also after was not available in those quantities by 15th November, nor the setups they were after and little support with platform problems known in the industry like K10h had September 10th. 19th November, Barcelona is in a better position than Penryn is in the server market to corporations where it counts. Are OEMs supplied fully with support? I'm not sure, but HP doesn't want to sell them yet anyway because of platform problems, and thats a major point.

The only problem with Intels plan is, changing motherboards so concurrently. One of the major plus points in evaluating a processor is "ease and cost of system upgradeability" and Nehlem fails this, whilst Penryn doesn't. Thats a major put off in the server and desktop market, so they need all the PR work possible to make it attractive enough to consider buying when it releases, and I know I definitely won't be changing to a Nehlem/DDR3 after Penryn in the next 12 months, simply because of the platform costs. That's one plus point for AMD though, along with their motherboards being quite perfect for a gamer or multi-GPU setup. Intel only mainly has nForce 680i for this, which is a step backward for quad core. Intels 975X chipset is still one of the best I've seen, better than P35 and X38 in terms of pure perfromance at same clocks, even GPU performance, but still no decent CF/SLi. Quad-core overclock/performance and DDR3 is what has improved mainly with the new Intel chipset releases to reap better performance from their platforms and they do make good gains.

[JVguest]

Cache dont use much power....On the old P4 Xeons with 16MB L3 it was 0.75W per MB at 3.73Ghz if im not mistaken. Logic is the heavy power consumer. Not cache. You can also see on thermal charts on dies that the cache areas are relatively cold.

You can also compare the power consumption of different cache size chips of the same archtecture.

I doubt another 5W or so wouldnt tip the iceberg if it added 5-10% more performance.

You're right about the power consumption of cache, a quick check of data sheets shows the cache is not a big power eater.

That said, K10 is running hot and having trouble clocking high as well as yields. A big L2 cache definitely wouldn't help matters. AMD has lower SRAM density, that wouldn't be the only factor keeping them from using big L2 cache, the difference isn't that large.

[KTE]

Edit: For reference, this is shakirou ...
I'm not sure I understand people like this guy, although there are many of them on both sides.

[Donnie27]

You wil not be able to use DDR3 1600 together with penry i assume. For nehalem a new board will be required 2009.

After a bios update my asus m2a-vm supports DDR2 1066. According to amd slides 45nm am3 parts will work in am2 boards.
Looking at current benchmarks an phenom update might not be usefull at the moment, things might look different with b3's or 45nm parts next year.
In normal office workloads and with not up to date software I do not believe you'll get even close to 10%.
But i plan to get both platforms and create my own benchmarks using HP's loadrunner tool to find the best platform for my companies needs.
We run alot of old celeron based workstations at work, last year i started to buy am2 platforms, there was no need for more calculation power but having two cores at a little lower power consumtion (most of the time those workstations run more or less idle) is a nice thing in terms of responsibility . I'm happy to see that I will be able to upgrade processors till 2009 on those platforms, just in case more power is needed. I prefere to run the same platform on all workstations because it simplifies servicing.

I don't run my system overclocked all day, from my perspective it's a waste of energy. I plan to test enegry efficiency with over and underclocked platforms to verify my allegations.

Hope you guys can understand that in my case of pc usage 10% more performance and overclocking cappabilities do not matter and why I'm still happy with amd's.

Then you assume wrong. DDR3 boards are out now and since Intel will move to CSI, everyone interested is looking forward to getting a new board. As whole, Core architecture is less Memory Bandwidth Dependant than AMD processors. 1600MHz FSB processors wouldn't be hurt as much not only running with 1333MHz RAM but also with 1066. You'd have to do a lot of "Mega-Tasking" to notice a difference.

Don't matter if you under or over clock, both Kentsfield and Penyrn are more efficient than K-10. What joo talkin' bout? I'm sure this will be the same case with Dual Core Kuma.

Drop that 10% stuff since some apps are more than 10% and some are less. It's kind of funny that you'd complain about Not overclocking all the time. Your rig doesn't have enough Headroom to be overclocked much anyway. Penryn at 3GHz (is much more than 10% faster) is still cooler, uses less power and put off less heat than the Phenom at 2.4GHz LOL!

[nemrod]

You wil not be able to use DDR3 1600 together with penry i assume. For nehalem a new board will be required 2009.



Why not already on XS:
http://fugger.netfirms.com/c3.jpg

[justapost]

Ok my apologies.

However, the staunch position I take is because you are misrepresenting data and facts. Look, Phenom is not a bad CPU, it is not a Prescott, it did in fact improve over their prior core... just not enough.

But to bumfoosul the data, like you need a whole new MB for a Yorkfield, well that is plain wrong. Claiming only 1-5% with the data clearly shows otherwise is wrong. Stating you need DDR3-1600 to get better performance is wrong. All your statements completely contradict the data.

I claimed that 1-5% for real workload and added that i might be wrong because i did not follow penry stuff. Maybe it are 5-10% or even 15% if you use the latest software. You will not realise that speedup even if it's 15% under normal work. My X2-3800 felt a little faster running at 2,5 GHz (25% more Mhz). So i really don't care about +-10%. To get a better speedup you need up to date software and latest hardware, without overclocking.


Edit: For reference, this is shakirou ... he practices the same tactics: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/597/13/

Don't get paranoid, i do not use tactics and i'm not that guy.

[JumpingJack]

I claimed that 1-5% for real workload and added that i might be wrong because i did not follow penry stuff. Maybe it are 5-10% or even 15% if you use the latest software. You will not realise that speedup even if it's 15% under normal work. My X2-3800 felt a little faster running at 2,5 GHz (25% more Mhz). So i really don't care about +-10%. To get a better speedup you need up to date software and latest hardware, without overclocking.



Don't get paranoid, i do not use tactics and i'm not that guy.

Selectively pulling 2 data points to support a claim without considering the entire data set as a whole is called 'selective data analysis', it is a tactic used by many -- unfortunately, it is used by companies to... I have seen Intel do it, I have seen AMD do it...

[JumpingJack]

I'm not sure I understand people like this guy, although there are many of them on both sides.

I have seen them come from both sides.... it is my pet peeve -- it is one thing to argue, "hey, look AMD offers a good product for a good price", this is rational.

It is another to dilute the value of the competitor by twisting the data and facts to suit a predetermined view...

It is the sanity of the data and the contextual analysis (or lack thereof), I couldn't careless who it makes look better... just represent it correctly for goodness sake.

When a person selectively pulls one or two observations and extends that generalization as a whole either to prop up or deride one or the other... this is classic Sharikou tact.

[justapost]

U guys give ma a hard time, next time i'll add inaccuracies to percentage based statements to avoid this.

[JumpingJack]

U guys give ma a hard time, next time i'll add inaccuracies to percentage based statements to avoid this.

Nahhh... really, just spend the few minutes or so ensuring the data supports what you are wanting to say and we will all get along fine :)

Look.... the data is clear, AMD fell short this round. They are having a hard time financially, but if you want to make a case "AMD offers good value for the money, and can compete price/performance wise so long as it keeps it low, therefore I prefer AMD" this is a great argument. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, Phenom will sell well ... they have plenty of dedicated customers who, for any other reason, simply want to support the underdog. AMD has priced it well so it will sell, etc. et.

But you have in prior post made statements which are inaccurate, I will ultimately call you on those when I know the data states the contrary.

Jack

[KTE]

Also can anyone give some feedback here if they can get hold of Phenom X4 please? I'm sure they have supply problems.

I have been unable to get hold of any. I've been told X4 9500 ETA 28th Nov, X4 9600 ETA 11th December and X4 9700.. well probably March now. :D


U guys give ma a hard time, next time i'll add inaccuracies to percentage based statements to avoid this.

You're doing just fine bro. :) Just some people have been online for a while and day in day out have encountered extremists and brainwashed fanatics, so once they see a little similarity they take the offensive to stop the "presumed" fan from splattering any ridiculous blurb. That sort of "pre-emptive" action can be wrong many times based on little statements and people like yourself tend to get caught up with being wrongly convicted of AManiaDevelopment. :D I've seen you in threads around and I 'aint nobody to judge, but my own opinion is you're as balanced as anyone here.. based on what you might have read at any one time. There are "some" where you just can't say that though to speak the truth.

[John600rr]

Also can anyone give some feedback here if they can get hold of Phenom X4 please? I'm sure they have supply problems


I've been informed a ship date of 30 Nov for 9500 and zero info (aka: TBD) for 9600 and 9700.

This is from a smaller supplier, but only one I can use for work.

[justapost]

To get that 10&#37; perfomance gain intel claims you need latest mobo, ram and software, way too expensive.
@jack
Uhm I was really inaccurate here.

I agreed with +-10% do not matter, as from my experience one realises a speed bump at around 25%.
In addition I wanted to say that getting the last percentage of performance out of a system you need latest hard and software, which is an expensive task and not efficient in terms of budget for average pc usage. Sound less offensive like that i hope.

ot:
@donnie
Bought that system before i dropped in here, just started playing with overclocking and i must say it's real fun.

@kte
:up:

[Plywood99]

Well, not dogging Amd but, I made the right move switching to Q6600 in September. Handwriting has been on the wall for some time folks. Hector has done what he does best and that is drive a company down. If Jerry was still in charge things would be far chipper now...


Ply

[red]

Who feels bamboozled?

[Jethro]

LOL @ Justapost sig =)

So even if my new Phenom system is 50&#37; faster or more then my current setup should i cry if its slower then someone else's intel system by ________ (insert % here)? Will i drive slower in Need for speed? Will i type less words per minute!? Will my bullets be slower as well?!!! OMG will my games be unplayable?!!! What about CAD!! What about my epeeeni will it be shrunken? Oh man now ive worried myself.... Dam u AMD!

[JumpingJack]

@jack
Uhm I was really inaccurate here.

I agreed with +-10% do not matter, as from my experience one realises a speed bump at around 25%.
In addition I wanted to say that getting the last percentage of performance out of a system you need latest hard and software, which is an expensive task and not efficient in terms of budget for average pc usage. Sound less offensive like that i hope.

ot:
@donnie
Bought that system before i dropped in here, just started playing with overclocking and i must say it's real fun.

@kte
:up:


Frankly, I am as dissapointed as anyone. While I am not exclusively Intel, I do tend that way for various reasons... but the AMD showing is very discouraging. The benefit to all of us is when each of these guys are at their throats and AMDs showing of late has been very weak.

Regardless of being an AMD user or an exclusive Intel user or anything in between, the data we saw today is very disappointing to say the least.

[hersounds]

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9366/pwnedprevft4yk6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[red]

LOL @ Justapost sig =)

So even if my new Phenom system is 50% faster or more then my current setup should i cry if its slower then someone else's intel system by ________ (insert % here)? Will i drive slower in Need for speed? Will i type less words per minute!? Will my bullets be slower as well?!!! OMG will my games be unplayable?!!! What about CAD!! What about my epeeeni will it be shrunken? Oh man now ive worried myself.... Dam u AMD!

Compatibility, power use, performance, price all seem a wash. So yes you should cry.

[Jethro]

Discouraging?? Who really thought Phenom was gonna slap Intel around anyway? You gotta be kidding me if u thought it might.. Just like any of AMD's past cpu releases i expect it will come around well enough. In fact the overall foundation being laid is alot better then it has been in the past. AMD has a GOOD chipset rolling out, a GOOD batch of vid cards and probably a GOOD cpu when its all said and done. In the big picture this is farther ahead then AMD has ever been that i can recall if u really think about it.

GOOD maybe not the "best" but GOOD and thats all they need to be for now for both sides to reap the benifits.

[Jethro]

Compatability how so?

Power use is to close to call and will only get better. Take 939 for example mine uses less power now then when i bought it with driver improvements.. nm new bios etc for the boards in question.

Performance PFFT its still hella fast for those who actually need an upgrade.

Price's for hardware are awesome right now no matter which way u go (except mobo's?). ATI cards get the edge as well as them black box beauts from AMD.

[justapost]

Frankly, I am as dissapointed as anyone. While I am not exclusively Intel, I do tend that way for various reasons... but the AMD showing is very discouraging. The benefit to all of us is when each of these guys are at their throats and AMDs showing of late has been very weak.

Regardless of being an AMD user or an exclusive Intel user or anything in between, the data we saw today is very disappointing to say the least.
Performance was in the range i expected, wished they where on par c2c.
I could not make myself a clear picture about power consumtion based on those reviews. Anandtech, Hexus, tom's hw only posted results of the 125W 9700, Legit measured at 2,6 GHz.
Hothardware's result look a little odd compared to the others.
[H] showed an 9600 with lower consumption in all areas, Matbe showed an 9500 with higher consumption than an q6600 under full load.
Can be that the lower clocked 9500 and 9600 requires less power than intel's q6600, at least if idle, of cause they are less powerfull.
Pricing in germany seems to be really attractive.

[keiths]

>> Who really thought Phenom was gonna slap Intel around anyway?

Those who hover around in the AMD section.

[Zytek_Fan]

Where's that EPIC FAIL picture....



Hmmm, one would have expected AMD to do a better job with K10, but a lot of bad choices made by Hector (of course) led to this failure. Although it's not a total failure, because they can undercut Intel's quad pricing, and sell some in the OEM sector.

[[XC] hipno650]

Discouraging?? Who really thought Phenom was gonna slap Intel around anyway? You gotta be kidding me if u thought it might.. Just like any of AMD's past cpu releases i expect it will come around well enough. In fact the overall foundation being laid is alot better then it has been in the past. AMD has a GOOD chipset rolling out, a GOOD batch of vid cards and probably a GOOD cpu when its all said and done. In the big picture this is farther ahead then AMD has ever been that i can recall if u really think about it.

GOOD maybe not the "best" but GOOD and thats all they need to be for now for both sides to reap the benifits.

i fail to see how it's GOOD.
-it's slower than last gen intel clock per clock
-it can't overclock worth anything
-it's more expensive (what i have seen so far on etailers)
-it has a higher power consumption

this is all against LAST gen intel parts. frankly theres nothing that good about it.

and to be perfectly honest the only good thing to come out of AMD in the past 1.5 years has been the 3850 (just because of the price) and the biggest problem seems to be that it will be another year before we see something good come out of AMD. as nvidia is releasing a new high end soon that is shaping up to blow the r680 out of the water and the next CPU to come out is just a shrinked and updated K10 (which is not going to beat intel 45nm parts let alone what nealeam has in store for AMD)

not to mention their parts have been coming out latter than everyone else's and performing worse. i loved K8 (i own 4 K8 dual cores at the moment) but AMD just got lazy and it may cost them big time

[Jethro]

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4277&Itemid=1

Exerpt:

We can tell you that the Spider platform includes an AMD 7x0 motherboard, a Phenom CPU and a Radeon 38x0 card (or a few of them) and that it works, looks and feels good. It is not the best thing around but it works nice and gives you a lot of performance for the money. You can buy a Phenom CPU, high end motherboard and a single Radeon 3850 card for about €600 which is not that much money, considering that you’ll get a machine that will be able to play all the games today and overclock both GPU and motherboard even in Windows with OverDrive.

The point is that you will be able to upgrade to future processors as today you can plug Athlon X2 in socket AM2+ and later you can migrate to Phenom when it gets a decent speed and later, Phenom 45 nanometre will work, at least the one with DDR2 memory controller. All of this should work at AMD 7x0 motherboards that are out today. Theoretically you will have CPUs all the way to 2009 that will fit to the current Spider platform. AMD claims dominance and its all AND 7x0 series of chipsets has PCIe 2.0 and a great overclocking potential at low power consumption.

[JumpingJack]

Performance was in the range i expected, wished they where on par c2c.
I could not make myself a clear picture about power consumtion based on those reviews. Anandtech, Hexus, tom's hw only posted results of the 125W 9700, Legit measured at 2,6 GHz.
Hothardware's result look a little odd compared to the others.
[H] showed an 9600 with lower consumption in all areas, Matbe showed an 9500 with higher consumption than an q6600 under full load.
Can be that the lower clocked 9500 and 9600 requires less power than intel's q6600, at least if idle, of cause they are less powerfull.
Pricing in germany seems to be really attractive.

Well, we can brighten up the picture a little.... first the bad part... with limited supply, etailers will gouge, this is a fact of life, it happened when Conroe launched, it will happen with Phenom... so it will be a few weeks before retail pricing settles down, it will be more attractive no doubt.

In a duopoly market all things are relative to the 'other guy'. There is the Pepsi Challenge for example, and Coke's royal screw up with the 'new forumla'. Taken by itself, Phenom/K10 development actually accomplished what it needed (save a bit more debuggin) -- 15&#37; average IPC improvement over the prior core is an accomplishment, especially retaining the 3 issue core.

In fact, it appears that there is some more ILP to extract from the x86 code base because some of the overhaul of the K8 included widening the instruction window. By itself, without the relative comparison to the 'other guy', K10 is quite a success... clocks could be little better, but in the theory of multicore implementation it is expected quad will lag dual core in clock speed.

What it comes to is a smart move on AMD's part ensuring socket compatibility to existing builds, as such the upgrade path is certainly compelling... better the K8 clock for clock, and certainly a better CPU for multithreaded code... my advice to others, if asked, would be to wait one more stepping though, the chatter around the TLB errata is abit disturbing for stability sake.

What AMD needed and what they did not get was a sufficient performance leap to push ahead of Intel and coax those who moved to socket 775 Intel platforms back to AM2/2+ ... Intel's C2D leap forward was compelling enough to justify the switch, and 45 nm keeps a degree of drop in to help sweeten the pot so to speak. Hindsight is 20/20 and the timing for AMD has been crappy for the past 2 years, they decided to EOL their most popular socket right at a time when their competitor produced a jaw-dropping product and a MB switch would be needed for an upgrade anyway.

The situation is this... AMD will see a market for this core in a) HPC and high throughput applications on the server side (good margins) b) a loyalty base will purchase this no matter what, c) existing AM2 builds will see the sub 300 price as a decent upgrade path and demand will result from there.

The gloominess from today's information is that it did not change the status quo, i.e. this goes beyond me, you or any one's preferences on a back alley enthusiast forum arguing between 1-5% or 4-10% ... AMD cannot maintain the status quo -- because the current status quo is unprofitable for them... and this is the danger me, you and the rest of the hobbyist face.

Jack

[Jethro]

@ Hipno

History has show that most early revisions of new CPU's clock like shiite!!

ATI cards DO kick the snot out of NVidia power/ price/perf wise now. If Nvidia cant supply an 8800gt to the masses how the hell they gonna trump with quantity in q1? NM the SLI fiasco underway.. drivers/intel blah blah

Power consumption for the whole spider system hasnt really been measured extensively yet.

Some peeps are hitting 3ghz some arent! It all points to immaturity really.. I suspect ill have fun with one eventually =)

If your gonna base your price estimates on just released prices then im wastin my time even posting..

You fail to see the good yes.

[Dainas]

@ Hipno

History has show that most early revisions of new CPU's clock like shiite!!

ATI cards DO kick the snot out of NVidia power/ price/perf wise now.

No they don't, they have to underclock to the point of having to underprice because their performance or wattage can not get on the Radar next to Nvidia. Unfortunately for amd cpus, their yields are so bad that they cannot even manage that! No one cares about the 10% of benchmarks where their neck and neck per mhz, until its accross the field there is no point in caring for Phenom unless you just want to help AMD stay afloat.

Sure Core 2 did not clock so great at first, but it still was better than Phenom per core 1.5 years ago.

[Jethro]

@JumpinJack TY for your unbiased and very informative post :) This is no new position for AMD to be in tho lets be honest.

Spider really is enticing for those of us who skipped a gen of upgrading you have to admit!!

[Donnie27]

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9366/pwnedprevft4yk6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

LOL!

[Jethro]

@ Dainas

AMD's current lineup isnt so bad really and only looks to get better. You're over playing the performance delta a tad IMO. Us geeks are rather spoiled nowadays. In the end we have FAR more computer then we need anyway. ZOMG i cant play UT4 in 2500x1600 ./cry...

Ultimately the most GREEN manufacture will win my money. AMD is trying in that department at least even if they fail(ed). This whole throwaway PCB/CHIP cycle seems really wasteful hence why i cant stand Intel's throw away your mobo mentality. At least with this new AMD hardware u may actually (again for me) OWN a motherboard for a few years and justify the current prices of them..

[afireinside]

@ Hipno

History has show that most early revisions of new CPU's clock like shiite!!

ATI cards DO kick the snot out of NVidia power/ price/perf wise now. If Nvidia cant supply an 8800gt to the masses how the hell they gonna trump with quantity in q1? NM the SLI fiasco underway.. drivers/intel blah blah

Power consumption for the whole spider system hasnt really been measured extensively yet.

Some peeps are hitting 3ghz some arent! It all points to immaturity really.. I suspect ill have fun with one eventually =)

If your gonna base your price estimates on just released prices then im wastin my time even posting..

You fail to see the good yes.

ATI cards kicking the snow out of nvidia power/price/perf wise? Proof please.

I've owned an 8800GTS since launch date. You can find them for slightly over 200 dollars used now, which happens to be the same price as a 3870 and slightly less than MSRP of an 8800GT. I have yet to this day see a product from ATI that can match, let alone beat my overclocked GTS across the board. They may have a slight advantage vs a stock GTS in some games but turn on AA and it's all over.

SLI fiasco? SLI works better than crossfire at least... Drivers? debatable. Intel? Penryn runs on their board. Intel SLI licensing? Keep dreaming. Get your ATI fanboyism out please.

Whoever said you can keep the same mobo for years, that's a load of BS. Phenom was toted to "drop into" AM2 boards. Not happening. And even if it does, it will be crippled compared to 790fx. Buying a motherboard and being able to use multiple generations of CPU on it is like buying an SLI motherboard and planning to run SLI when next gen cards come out. Great idea in theory but it doesn't work. It would be cheaper and faster to sell your old card and buy a new top of the line single card than it would be to buy ANOTHER old card.

[Wiggy McShades]

@JumpinJack TY for your unbiased and very informative post :) This is no new position for AMD to be in tho lets be honest.

Spider really is enticing for those of us who skipped a gen of upgrading you have to admit!!



how is it enticing, what does it have to offer? Even when there is a new revision out it will have to compete with a 45nm quad that uses less power and clocks even higher. i was planning on selling my intel system to switch over to an amd system, but im sorry higher power consumption lower performance and no hope of hitting speeds comparable to what i have now just makes it a no brainier on what to choose.

[[XC] hipno650]

@ Hipno

History has show that most early revisions of new CPU's clock like shiite!!

ATI cards DO kick the snot out of NVidia power/ price/perf wise now. If Nvidia cant supply an 8800gt to the masses how the hell they gonna trump with quantity in q1? NM the SLI fiasco underway.. drivers/intel blah blah

Power consumption for the whole spider system hasnt really been measured extensively yet.

Some peeps are hitting 3ghz some arent! It all points to immaturity really.. I suspect ill have fun with one eventually =)

If your gonna base your price estimates on just released prices then im wastin my time even posting..

You fail to see the good yes.

uh ATI cards beating nvidia. think again. ATI has NO high end so thats a default win for the 8800ultra and GTX and the 8800gt 512 beats the 3870 by more than allot for about the same price and now with the 256mb 8800gt the 3850 get beat as well for the price. and as for SLI fiasco the 680i is still a great chipset and SLI has always been better as far as game support, driver issues and performance scaling than Crossfire. i have seen far to many game in which crossfire brings performance DOWN.

well power consumption has been measured for K10 and it is worse than intel every review i looked at showed that.

as for overclocking the 3ghz was with the unlocked muli's of the ES chips so retail will be worse and some sites have show only a 200mhz increase before it got unstable on any voltage. not good at all. and the worst part is even at 3ghz it still can't compare to a 3ghz q6600 let alone a 3.6ghz one.

granted prices will drop but when i see the 2.2ghz one selling for more than a q6600 i start to lose hope. oh and for mobo's? $250 for a 790fx chipped

board. so much for cheap mobo's so far. not to mention the chipset is slower than other AM2 parts anyways.

and it came out more than a year after intel? can you blame me for not seeing the good in it? the only thing that would make it attractive would be a sub $200 price tag.

[JumpingJack]

how is it enticing, what does it have to offer? Even when there is a new revision out it will have to compete with a 45nm quad that uses less power and clocks even higher. i was planning on selling my intel system to switch over to an amd system, but im sorry higher power consumption lower performance and no hope of hitting speeds comparable to what i have now just makes it a no brainier on what to choose.

As a platform it works well for OEMs as they can bundle an entire package, with full validation occuring with the manufacturer and simplifies their qualification process.... this is enticing.

For a ground up build, we did not really see any earth-shattering performance to be enticing to the general population. There are some who will want to run 4 graphics cards (the real key point of this platform), but there it loses the uniqueness as both players have 2 or 3 PCIe solutions for multiple GPUs/physics assist. I wonder how much percentage of the market now is 2 cards, the valve survey does not really give any statistics... darn.

Jack

[John600rr]

@ Jethro

First you said...


Ultimately it will be a plenty FAST setup for my needs.

and then...


Ultimately the most GREEN manufacture will win my money.

Ultimately, your grasping for straws. If you want to buy Phenom, buy it. What's next? AMD gets your business because the voices in your head told you so? :D

[YukonTrooper]

Jethro, AMD better hope they have tons of fan boys like yourself because they are getting beaten up pretty bad ATM.

[Zytek_Fan]

Wizard's Tenth Rule:

People who for whatever reason don't want to see the truth can be acutely hostile to it and shrill in their denunciation of it. They frequently turn their venomous antagonism on whoever dares to point out that truth ... To those seeking the truth, it's a matter of simple, rational, self interest to always keep reality in view. Truth is rooted in reality, after all, not the imagination.


Good way to think of it.

[Jethro]

You guys are just jealous cuz i'll be able to afford a Phenom system and yall cant b/c intel got all ur hardware allowance already haha. :D

Dig the quote even!

[JumpingJack]

Wizard's Tenth Rule:



Good way to think of it.

Outstanding ... :)

[Zytek_Fan]

You know it was meant for the people who decide to get Phenom even though Yorkfield far surpasses it?

[Dainas]

You guys are just jealous cuz i'll be able to afford a Phenom system and yall cant b/c intel got all ur hardware allowance already haha. :D

Dig the quote even!

ROFL :D

[Jethro]

Yes Zyetek, i understood it well. The truth is just because it may be unpopular to buy AMD right now doesnt make it wrong or "false" to do. Just, according to some, its stupid, naive and whatever other venom is sprayed in light of that decision. I dont care what they say i'm quite ok with my choice.

Fact is it will be quite an upgrade for me and will probably have just as much longevity as a similarly priced Intel system if not more.. bottom line.

The margins of performance arent enough to sway that decision either. In fact im still quite looking forward to this, it has been 2yrs after all. :)

You can call me AMD fanboy anytime!

[Zytek_Fan]

Yes i understood it well. The truth is just because it may be unpopular to buy AMD right now doesnt make it wrong or "false" to do. Just, according to some, its stupid, naive and whatever other venom is sprayed in light of that decision. I dont care.

Fact is it will be quite an upgrade for me and will probably have just as much longevity as a similarly priced Intel system if not more.. bottom line.

The margins of performance arent enough to sway that decision either. In fact im still quite looking forward to this, it has been 2yrs after all. :)

You can call me AMD fanboy anytime!

Nothing wrong with having a strong conviction for a company. People can recommend you what to get over and over again, but it is YOU who makes the decision. It is you who decides what best fits what you do day to day, not other people.

[JumpingJack]

Yes Zyetek, i understood it well. The truth is just because it may be unpopular to buy AMD right now doesnt make it wrong or "false" to do. Just, according to some, its stupid, naive and whatever other venom is sprayed in light of that decision. I dont care what they say i'm quite ok with my choice.

Fact is it will be quite an upgrade for me and will probably have just as much longevity as a similarly priced Intel system if not more.. bottom line.

The margins of performance arent enough to sway that decision either. In fact im still quite looking forward to this, it has been 2yrs after all. :)

You can call me AMD fanboy anytime!

Jethro, no body is trying to convince you personally what to buy, nor should we... that goes for anyone or anything, as I said before there are some people who will buy AMD no matter what and even buying a Phenom now or tomorrow, if one is an exclusive AMD user then they are going to get a performance boost in some fashion.

What is incorrect it looking at the data (and you have not done this per se) and drawing conclusions to the contrary, propping up an inaccurate picture that would fool otherwise unknowledgable people into thinking AMD has some how achieved parity or exceeded intel in performance and/or value for various applications.

Buying a Phenom is not a bad choice, not by a long shot -- and it should not be 'unpopular' in terms of 'you should not be insulted for your purchasing decision' ... purchase what you feel you need/want but do so knowing that for the money it is clear it is the second best -- this is what a research of the data into your purchase will and should conclude. I myself always research my big purchases, through reviews, consumer report magazines, and other publications and specs. I often do not purchase the most expensive or top rated products of various stuff for similar reasons, perhaps I just want to treat the little guy better or I have had a bad experience with the other player, who knows.... to each their own.

Jack

[Jethro]

Hmm didnt mean to imply parity or mislead. If anything im being insensitive to all the benchmarking crowd that has to have the fastest thing no matter what. In that light i guess the Phenom has bummed a few out. This is xtremesystems after all and i should respect that. On the other hand 2nd class or not, I'll enjoy my next box just as much as the other guy and thats what matters :)

[KTE]

No one can say it's "wrong" to buy whoever, it's your money and you can buy your personal preference as in with clothes, a car, a house or what not, without external condescending commands. All they can say is which perfroms better relatively and absolutely.. and the reason of saying this should be "for your or others' benefit" or the speaker is as bad as the one whose arguing a moot point. Name calling is again a common tactic usually employed by the weak in the head or arguments of playground children lacking comprehension in much because its the easiest scapegoat to use, although sometimes its applicable but those times are rarer than imagined by many. No one owns you or is higher up than you, like a God on earth to be able to command and control you and your money in that way... apart from governments and their millitaries quite obviously. :p: AMDs latest if priced rightly and packaged well with a stable and attractive platform (with saturated volume supply) appeals to many outside of the fanbase as well. It is with regret though, that I say they are having supply problems, which is glaringly obvious and pushing X4/X2/FX from September to January/March/April is not decent in any regard at all, they missed and lost thousands of customers at least, let alone fans. By then I'm pretty sure most quad-core hunters would've taken the Penryn/C2Q route.

One supposition I've heard provided for support is that AMD is waiting to spoil Penryn with a 2.8GHz FX/2.8GHz X4 launch near to Penryn desktop launch in volumes (January). That could be, as I'm not privy to the company but it's highly unlikely, as in above 98&#37; unlikely at this stage, seeing what we've seen and how the tables have turned throughout last year. I don't think there will be a 2.8GHz till mid-Q2 at least. The core for Barcelona is the same as Phenom. Supply is short and yeilds far lower than a C2Q, and the demand in the server market is not being met enough to have enough for desktop users where the profit margin and monetary importance is smaller than in the server segment. So what you see is AMD prioritizing for the server over desktop users, although still falling short. Just look at the ETA for the launched X4. The only model freely available at many places and offered by OEMs is the 9500. :(

[JumpingJack]

Hmm didnt mean to imply parity or mislead. If anything im being insensitive to all the benchmarking crowd that has to have the fastest thing no matter what. In that light i guess the Phenom has bummed a few out. This is xtremesystems after all and i should respect that. On the other hand 2nd class or not, I'll enjoy my next box just as much as the other guy and thats what matters :)

And that is my point, people will spend their money on what ever they want to spend it on... we can all read, or at least most of us... the data is the data and you know what you are getting.

As a case in point, my background is in the hard sciences, so I like to experiment, turn knobs and such... I bought an AM2 board and a throw-away brisbane just to tinker, with the intention of plopping in a Phenom when support became available. Part of my experiments are looking for the cold-bug on the 65 nm process (I have a theory :) ), after I was finished with the Phenom it would become a folder and, if per chance it beat my QX6850 (*long shot chance*) it would have become my main rig :) so I will buy AMD processors because, frankly they are better at a few things at the moment... just like I bought P4's when K8's were kicking but because P4's were better and a couple of applications (not many mind you, but a couple :) )....

When the B3's come out I will take a closer look at perhaps following through on that plop in/fold plan, but the TLB errata chatter has me a little spooked... errata is fact in all CPUs, but if this is enough to cause AMD to withdraw a bin, then I will wait.

Jack

[Jethro]

Or not getting anytime soon if what KTE says is true... May have to get the everything but the cpu for now =(

[DuceGT]

I'm still praying for reverse hyper threading :D

[JumpingJack]

I'm still praying for reverse hyper threading :D

Don't laugh... AMD actually has a patent on the concept, and Intel is working on Mitosis (http://www.intel.com/technology/magazine/research/speculative-threading-1205.htm)

Theo Valich's Reverse HyperThreading has a more computer science technical name, it is called Speculative Threading, and it does indeed exist. A quick search reveals some interesting data:

http://liberty.princeton.edu/Publications/dascmp05_scalability.pdf
http://personals.ac.upc.edu/antonio/conferences/pmarcue_hpcn_1999_paper.pdf
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~jbrown/papers/sp-cmp.pdf

[mongoled]

thanks for the moderation

:up:

[Dream308]

AmdTI shouldnt of been investing so much interest in their newly aquired video card ownership but rather what made them what they are today..

I had such high hopes also..:shakes:
/Crushed. :(

Lol @ Mr.smartass nice picture!.. Its sad but true.

[mongoled]

P.S. whats wrong with the image? :confused:For an 'engineer' you sure arnt using your brain very well....

20. Trolling
Anyone entering the forum with the express intent to cause trouble or harm is subject to immediate and permanent ban.

Please take the time and read the following

Forum Policies & Guidelines (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/announcement.php?f=20&a=55)

[Cooper]

20. Trolling
Anyone entering the forum with the express intent to cause trouble or harm is subject to immediate and permanent ban.

Please take the time and read the following

Forum Policies & Guidelines (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/announcement.php?f=20&a=55)

Exactly and he should know that better

This is public forum - not kindergarten

[knightwolf654]

i see one guy on here defending a company and about 10 putting him down. wow you guys were bully's weren't you :D

AMD has a good system, its worth it to me to upgrade since my system is acting funky as it is. AMD will get my money, Just because you guys cant handle someones decisions you continue to cut it down. classic bullying and i am tired of reading it, jeez come on now so AMD didn't perform as well as you wanted they still are first to release a native quad core. it may not be all that but its still enough of a performance leap for AMD to get my money, if you have a problem with that you a intel fanboy and probable shouldn't be posting in this thread.

[KTE]

Or not getting anytime soon if what KTE says is true... May have to get the everything but the cpu for now =(I was in a similar boat. I had all the components ready (well ordered) and the 9700 ordered too. They gave me a 3 week wait initially (2 week from now) but they've changed the ETA status to January 08 now. My profession is also in the sciences so it wasn't for the sake of uber performance I was buying it, but for messing around and experiementing which is kinda second nature in our inclining. .. :D

[naokaji]

i see one guy on here defending a company and about 10 putting him down. wow you guys were bully's weren't you :D

AMD has a good system, its worth it to me to upgrade since my system is acting funky as it is. AMD will get my money, Just because you guys cant handle someones decisions you continue to cut it down. classic bullying and i am tired of reading it, jeez come on now so AMD didn't perform as well as you wanted they still are first to release a native quad core. it may not be all that but its still enough of a performance leap for AMD to get my money, if you have a problem with that you a intel fanboy and probable shouldn't be posting in this thread.

Native or not... many people here would stick a goattongue into their mainboard if it would net higher performance..... just because they clearly say they want the higher performing part doesnt automatically make them fanboys.

barcelona sure is a nice drop in upgrade for the server market over k8, also, for gamers who have a big monitor and run it at its native resolution are gpu limited, so the pure cpu performance difference isnt as important anymore.

but, especially considering how easy it is to get massive oc's out of c2d, phenom is really far less than most people hoped for, also amd failed to fix what held k8 back in multimedia applications.

[Boschwanza]

So whats the deal with all that "disappointment" and Phenom bashing... anybody looked a bit more carefull on all that benches ?

I realy don't care about 10 FPS more or less on a game Benchmark unless the FPS are over 25. Whats realy interesting are those Benchmarks which take a great Benefit of 4 Core Design.

So lets look ....and.... oh what suprise, the Phenom is Equal to C2Q and even better then Intel in some Benches. If there is not such multicore optimization the real power of the Phenom just slips away and the result of that you can figure out in the rest of the "Core2 equal to Core4" benches.

The Phenom is the little Brother of the K10. The Barcelona is a big competition for Intel in Server market because there he takes alle the Benefits of its architecture (Scaling & SSE128 ).

Its not a matter of performance, its a matte how big a software can improve of 4 Core Design.

So my Opinion : All this disappointment is ridicoules. The Phenom does great in
what he is supposed to do -> Multithreading & Multicore Tasks!

[freeloader]

So whats the deal with all that "disappointment" and Phenom bashing... anybody looked a bit more carefull on all that benches ?

I realy don't care about 10 FPS more or less on a game Benchmark unless the FPS are over 25. Whats realy interesting are those Benchmarks which take a great Benefit of 4 Core Design.

So lets look ....and.... oh what suprise, the Phenom is Equal to C2Q and even better then Intel in some Benches. If there is not such multicore optimization the real power of the Phenom just slips away and the result of that you can figure out in the rest of the "Core2 equal to Core4" benches.

The Phenom is the little Brother of the K10. The Barcelona is a big competition for Intel in Server market because there he takes alle the Benefits of its architecture (Scaling & SSE128 ).

Its not a matter of performance, its a matte how big a software can improve of 4 Core Design.

So my Opinion : All this disappointment is ridicoules. The Phenom does great in
what he is supposed to do -> Multithreading & Multicore Tasks!

You can't be serious? Not to mention it's appetite for power. AMD clearly has some catching up to do.

Two thumbs up for AMD for the 38x0 series of GPU and the 790 chipset series, thumbs down for Phenom until the bugs are worked out and AMD can release it at higher speeds.

[Periander6]

the Phenom is Equal to C2Q

No. It is not even close to C2Q. It's 10% slower clock for clock, and its top speed is only 2.3GHz. Overall the FASTEST Phenom is slower than the SLOWEST C2Q. When you add in the fact that C2Q goes up to 3GHz the Kentsfield obliterates the Phenom. Were talking about Kentsfield, something a year old that Intel is about to replace. Not only can Phenom not equal it, it can't even overlap any part of C2Q's performance range. Even Prescott NEVER did so badly. Phenom is even worse than Prescott, and everyone knows what pure crap Prescott was.

[Start]

If you want to get technical, the X3210 should be the slowest quad core from Intel for LGA 775.

[knightwolf654]

i am not disapointed in AMD with this new chip, so its slower, i am not going to notice 10 fps as long as its high i dont care, intel wont get my money, ever. stop putting the guys down who are going to get a phenom, it seems you guys want nothing to do with AMD or ever do. then again i dont want to have anything to due with intel. plane and simple. intel is faster yes, cheaper in some aspects yes but still NOT BY MUCH.
10&#37; is not much phenom just came out, give it a few revisions and that tiny gap will be closed. face it you guys are fanboys. i am and i am admitting it.
step one to getting better in this meeting of CPUA is admitting your addiction... I LOVE AMD SO MUCH I WANT LITTLE AMD BABYS!!! :D

[GoThr3k]

I've owned an 8800GTS since launch date. You can find them for slightly over 200 dollars used now, which happens to be the same price as a 3870 and slightly less than MSRP of an 8800GT. I have yet to this day see a product from ATI that can match, let alone beat my overclocked GTS across the board. They may have a slight advantage vs a stock GTS in some games but turn on AA and it's all over.


sorry,but that is wrong,the AA issue is fixed with RV670 :)

[Dimitriman]

The important thing if u think about it, is that phenom is friggin finally out and now AMD can keep improving it till it provides a better value. Intels Penryn are only trully gonna be available in February 08 so if AMD can fix all the bugs and come up with a nice phenom to counter in particular Intel's Q9450, they will have a grip of the largest selling segment of Quad Cores.
Say what you want but if you have something to compete with Q6600 and Q9450, then you are part of the biggest market for quad cores since those sell the most no doubt. If AMD can compete here they will stay alive for next year I'm sure.