AMD Phenom 9100e First Pics & Review

[GoriLLakoS]

It seems like AMD is gonna release the Quad core for "the poor"
MSRP about $100-$130

Family : Phenom
Codename : Agena
Cores : X4
Frequency : 1.8GHz
Stepping : B2
Cache L1 : 512KB
L2 : 2MB
L3: 2MB









Link
Review
The topic is not in English, but i am gonna translate the key points when the review-comparison will be out [soon enough]

[BadNizze]

Quad Flr 100-130 go go this with an 780 board for my htpc!

[hecktic]

i suppose thats a good price range however I think they should have included just a tad more cache on L2, if not then L3 for sure

[duploxxx]

i suppose thats a good price range however I think they should have included just a tad more cache on L2, if not then L3 for sure

that is k10 design, you'll have to wait for 45nm revision for bigger l3 cache and also speed bump on cpu clock and most important on NB

nice price/core ratio

[Kasparz]

Sweet price. Only 9150e without errata would be tad better.

[largon]

Reporter: Mister Ruiz, how much does AMD profit from selling one Phenom 9100?
Ruiz: ...
Reporter: Uh, sir?
*crickets chirping*

[BrowncoatGR]

So the release version is going to be B3 but what you have is an ES sample and a B2?

[Bobsama]

Ruiz: ...
Reporter: AMD does profit, right?
Ruiz: Uhm... maybe?

[triple_A]

lol, here in NL a 9200 is available for 124euro's.

[Shift]

Looks PHENOMenal har har har

[thenrz]

A quad for $130 is actually in my price range. Wow...poor kid gets a quad

[[XC] gomeler]

Well considering how Phenom seems to max out at 2.6GHz, I wonder if this chip can hit 2.4-2.5Ghz overclocked? If so, killer budget chip although it'll probably still be trounced by the Q6600 G0.

[Epsilon84]

Well considering how Phenom seems to max out at 2.6GHz, I wonder if this chip can hit 2.4-2.5Ghz overclocked? If so, killer budget chip although it'll probably still be trounced by the Q6600 G0.

I think there would be some binning involved. If these chips can overclock to ~2.5GHz, it means that they could be sold off as higher margin Phenom 9500s and 9600s instead. With the poor clocks on current Phenoms, I don't think AMD is in a position to 'artificially' downclock their chips for the low end market. It'll probably be chips that failed to reach the 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 at stock volts, and rather than just throw it away, why not sell it as a budget quad core.

This is just personal speculation of course, I'd be happy to be proven wrong and have these suckers overclock just as far as a 9600 BE.

[BullGod]

Looks PHENOMenal har har har

[grimREEFER]

get one of these and a 9600gt, and ur set.
never has it been better for ppl who dont wanna spend too much money on hardware.

[Epsilon84]

get one of these and a 9600gt, and ur set.
never has it been better for ppl who dont wanna spend too much money on hardware.

Actually, a 1.8GHz Phenom would be a poor choice for a gaming machine. You'll be much better off with a higher clocked dual core CPU.

[JAWS]

if they release a quad for $100+....count me in. new mobo and all

[[XC] hipno650]

this plus a 780G chipped board. talk about a cheap build but decent on board video and a 4 core cpu. not to bad you could make a pretty good budget WCG only machine. $120 4 core cpu $70 780G chipset mobo $45 2Gb of DDR2 and a $30 Sparkle FSP 400watt psu and you good to go. all for under $300 not bad

[Calmatory]

Actually, a 1.8GHz Phenom would be a poor choice for a gaming machine. You'll be much better off with a higher clocked dual core CPU.

Well, this depends on alot of things. If you want to play todays games, then dual yes, but what if you want to enjoy games for few next years and ain't that interested in all those fancy gfx effects etc? Games which can utilize 4 cores will be faster with QC machine, if not overclocking etc. At least when comparing to DC CPUs @ $100-130 price, I think.

...completely another story when starting to overclock that rig.

[Epsilon84]

Well, this depends on alot of things. If you want to play todays games, then dual yes, but what if you want to enjoy games for few next years and ain't that interested in all those fancy gfx effects etc? Games which can utilize 4 cores will be faster with QC machine, if not overclocking etc. At least when comparing to DC CPUs @ $100-130 price, I think.

...completely another story when starting to overclock that rig.

The vast majority of games don't benefit at all from dual -> quad cores. An exception would be Supreme Commander, but even then, a higher clocked dual core can easily make up the difference:



Supreme Commander is very CPU limited and performance scales almost linearly with clockspeed. Extrapolating from the Phenom 9600 results, a Phenom 9100 would score about ~36fps, putting it below an X2 6000+, even in a heavily multithreaded game.

At the projected $100 - $130 pricerange, you're looking at C2D E4600 or X2 6000+ as alternatives. I would say both these chips will outperform a Phenom 9100 in gaming performance.

Let's not kid ourselves - by the time most games actually start taking advantage of quad cores, a Phenom 9100 would be obsolete. Even upon release, it'll be BY FAR the slowest QC CPU available today, let alone in 2 years time when we'll be running 4GHz+ octocore Nehalems and Bulldozers. It'll be a bit like running DX10 games on a 8600GT - yeah, it'll run with all the fancy features on, but at 10fps.

[Zytek_Fan]

Good way to get rid of all the B2's

[vengance_01]

The vast majority of games don't benefit at all from dual -> quad cores. An exception would be Supreme Commander, but even then, a higher clocked dual core can easily make up the difference:



Supreme Commander is very CPU limited and performance scales almost linearly with clockspeed. Extrapolating from the Phenom 9600 results, a Phenom 9100 would score about ~36fps, putting it below an X2 6000+, even in a heavily multithreaded game.

At the projected $100 - $130 pricerange, you're looking at C2D E4600 or X2 6000+ as alternatives. I would say both these chips will outperform a Phenom 9100 in gaming performance.

Let's not kid ourselves - by the time most games actually start taking advantage of quad cores, a Phenom 9100 would be obsolete. Even upon release, it'll be BY FAR the slowest QC CPU available today, let alone in 2 years time when we'll be running 4GHz+ octocore Nehalems and Bulldozers. It'll be a bit like running DX10 games on a 8600GT - yeah, it'll run with all the fancy features on, but at 10fps.

true but I wonder how wells these will O/C is a decent board. Some people just like to tinker and play with new hardware. When its cheap its a bonus

[Epsilon84]

true but I wonder how wells these will O/C is a decent board. Some people just like to tinker and play with new hardware. When its cheap its a bonus

Of course it's always fun to overclock the crap out of a cheap CPU.

If these can overclock to 2.5GHz then they will be incredible value for someone who's into media encoding, 3D rendering and the such, but not so much for gamers. You can get an E4500 to around 3.5GHz and it would blow it away in games. Heck, even an E2140 @ 3GHz would beat it in 99% of games. :p

[Kain665]

Well considering how Phenom seems to max out at 2.6GHz, I wonder if this chip can hit 2.4-2.5Ghz overclocked? If so, killer budget chip although it'll probably still be trounced by the Q6600 G0.

But it is 1/2 the price...

[anubis]

Nice one, AMD has to play the cheap card, and that cant be bad for us all. Can you say cheap Q9*** quads... (heres me hoping)