Official Phenom Reviews Thread

[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)

Another review
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...spx?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...spx?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...spx?i=3153&p=1

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.

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% 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/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

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/...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...