Official Phenom Reviews Thread

[JumpingJack]

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

XbitLabs Phenom @ 3GHz
Digit-Life investigating memory controller
Bit-tech Phenom 9900; ganged Vs unganged modes
Anandtech
Hexus Phenom 9600
Hexus Phenom 9900
HotHardware
ExtremeTech Preview
ExtremeTech Review
FiringSquad
Techwarelabs
Bcchardware
Tomshardware
PCPer
PCWorld <--- Ouch!
HardOCP
HardwareCanucks
LegitReviews
Hexus (Bang for the buck analysis, not in the UK anyway there appears to be some eTailer gouging)
TechReport
Guru3D
Neoseeker
PCTuning (in czech)
Erenumerique (in french)
Hardware (in french)
Matbe (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.ph...=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

[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/...m_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/...eaves_its_web/

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

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/...eb/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....

[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)

Another review
Idle power consumtion looks a little better compared to q6600.