Official Phenom Reviews Thread

[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

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]

[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?op...=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% 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]

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?

[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.

Dig the quote even!

[JumpingJack]

Wizard's Tenth Rule:



Good way to think of it.

Outstanding ...