Official Phenom Reviews Thread

[DoubleZero]

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.

That's pretty damn idiotic... So if AMD had released the 2.2 and 2.3 versions only when they had the faster versions available, and when Intel had already the slower C2Q versions, so that there was plenty overlapping, then phenom woudn't be worse then prescott,

K10 will end up being 15% slower then penryn, Prescott was a lot more slower then that.

[Periander6]

That's pretty damn idiotic... So if AMD had released the 2.2 and 2.3 versions only when they had the faster versions available, and when Intel had already the slower C2Q versions, so that there was plenty overlapping, then phenom woudn't be worse then prescott,

K10 will end up being 15% slower then penryn, Prescott was a lot more slower then that.

On Anand's charts even a 2.6 Phenom, which will be out God knows when, loses to the Q6600 on 11 of 15 benchmarks, and we are only weeks away from the full Yorkfield lineup. Then AMD is going to need at least 2.8GHz, and more like a 3.0 to even try to match the bottom York quad. There isn't even a roadmap now with that on it.

Right now it's not clear when, or if, there will ever be an overlap.

[DoubleZero]

On Anand's charts even a 2.6 Phenom, which will be out God knows when, loses to the Q6600 on 11 of 15 benchmarks, and we are only weeks away from the full Yorkfield lineup.

heh, and there are others reviews that show something completely diferent, this is 2900xt all over again, where the diferences between reviews were... let's just say amusing, and it will happen the same thing, someone will buy phenom as they bought 2900xt, and the conclusion will be the same, it's not as bad as painted by some reviews.

[Donnie27]

heh, and there are others reviews that show something completely diferent, this is 2900xt all over again, where the diferences between reviews were... let's just say amusing, and it will happen the same thing, someone will buy phenom as they bought 2900xt, and the conclusion will be the same, it's not as bad as painted by some reviews.

So if the reviewers aren't showing Phenom as being 40% faster, AMD still lied their @$$es off, right?

[GoThr3k]

So if the reviewers aren't showing Phenom as being 40% faster, AMD still lied their @$$es off, right?

amd never said that it would be 40% faster overall................

[Periander6]

amd never said that it would be 40% faster overall................

The exact quote, from Randy Allen was:

"Barcelona is going to be able to deliver performance levels for many workloads in excess of 40% beyond what Clovertown can."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_n3wvsfq4Y

A pretty comical video in hindsight.

[ryboto]

The exact quote, from Randy Allen was:

"Barcelona is going to be able to deliver performance levels for many workloads in excess of 40% beyond what Clovertown can."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_n3wvsfq4Y

A pretty comical video in hindsight.

Well, he said "many workloads". And for multiple socket systems, Barcelona's do offer higher performance versus an equivalent intel xeon system, at least that's what the benchmarks showed. Or maybe he was only referring to specific SPEC benchmarks.

[Donnie27]

amd never said that it would be 40% faster overall................

No they didn't they said in; "across a wide variety of workloads". What and where I ask? I saw NOTHING of the sort LOL!

http://www.news.com/AMD-Go-to-Barcel...3-6152645.html

When it comes to quad-core chips, good things come to those who wait, Advanced Micro Devices believes.

After years breathing AMD's dust, Intel beat its rival to the punch by releasing its quad-core Xeon 5300 "Clovertown" processor for servers in November. But AMD's "Barcelona" quad-core chip, due to arrive midway through 2007, will be a significant notch faster than the Clovertown chips expected to be on the market at that time, said Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president for server and workstation products.

"We expect across a wide variety of workloads for Barcelona to outperform Clovertown by 40 percent," Allen said. The quad-core chip also will outperform AMD's current dual-core Opterons on "floating point" mathematical calculations by a factor of 3.6 at the same clock rate, he said

That was parroted here by many on the Green team and asked loudly, "surely AMD wouldn't lie that much?" Ask Informal? The whole epilogue was to insert FUD and have shoppers wait or delay buying from Intel when AMD knew they didn't have a damned thing.

[freeloader]

So if the reviewers aren't showing Phenom as being 40% faster, AMD still lied their @$$es off, right?

If someone tells you something, swears it's the truth, then later is proven wrong, then what's that saying about them? One of two things; they just didn't know any better or they were trying to willfully deceive people.

IMHO I believe AMD was being deceitful to keep their share prices up and avoid panic.

[Donnie27]

If someone tells you something, swears it's the truth, then later is proven wrong, then what's that saying about them? One of two things; they just didn't know any better or they were trying to willfully deceive people.

IMHO I believe AMD was being deceitful to keep their share prices up and avoid panic.

So what did you think got Enron in trouble? You can't do that in the Business world and get away with it. But that wasn't the point. Many folks saw through the FUD, lies and etc... then were flame just for pointing out just what we all KNOW now.

[freeloader]

So what did you think got Enron in trouble? You can't do that in the Business world and get away with it. But that wasn't the point. Many folks saw through the FUD, lies and etc... then were flame just for pointing out just what we all KNOW now.

QFT!

[JumpingJack]

So if the reviewers aren't showing Phenom as being 40% faster, AMD still lied their @$$es off, right?

Well, AMD worded their 40% statement very carefully, at the time they made their claim, the mean 40% faster using SPEC2006FP_rates. They did not clarify if they meant clock for clock and such... they also stated in a wide range of applications, and the SPEC2006FP bench has 17 different code bases in it's suite, so one could argue that is a wide range.

Where they missed was their clock speed estimate, 2.0 GHz launch speed is significantly slower than what they planned and they had to revise their expectation downward as a result, recall Hector Ruiz downplaying the product.

Jack

[KTE]

Well, AMD worded their 40% statement very carefully, at the time they made their claim, the mean 40% faster using SPEC2006FP_rates.

They clarified it to their major business customers, my uncle is one so I'm aware as he told me around September 8th. I posted this back then in the Barcelona thread as well. They said the 40% refers to the same thing you are stating, and they even gave figures for the 2.6GHz version. That would mislead anyone who didn't understand what marketing is and that making such a statement was literally impossible for them over Clovertown and Harpertown, so there had to be a catch and small print involved as there is with anything nowadays. The "40%" value doesn't hold for most workloads in the server segment I've seen, although in comparison to Clovertown K10h is obviously much more on par then with the next gen 45nmm part.
Unfortunately, this is marketing, and marketing in the same methods occurs in everything including Intel. How much the end product delivers is what makes end users justify and forget about the initial marketing hypes and claims, and in this case Phenom didn't deliver, so now everything is going to turn into a severely dullish critique and outlook than would've been if the product was better than C2D/equal to Penryn. Like "simulated" reviews have shown, 2.6GHz K10 and 3.2GHz Penryn are power hogs compared to the next lower product. Also, on stock coolers, they are running very hot in stability tests, around 55-58C, which just confirms their TDPs and problems again. The main problem lies in the fact that while Intels upcoming products are ahead on clock-per-clock performance, they are also far ahead on overclock, overclocker favored benches, ~1GHz ahead on core frequencies at the same TDP. This is a major problem discussed during analyst critiques.

[Donnie27]

They clarified it to their major business customers, my uncle is one so I'm aware as he told me around September 8th. I posted this back then in the Barcelona thread as well. They said the 40% refers to the same thing you are stating, and they even gave figures for the 2.6GHz version. That would mislead anyone who didn't understand what marketing is and that making such a statement was literally impossible for them over Clovertown and Harpertown, so there had to be a catch and small print involved as there is with anything nowadays. The "40%" value doesn't hold for most workloads in the server segment I've seen, although in comparison to Clovertown K10h is obviously much more on par then with the next gen 45nmm part.
Unfortunately, this is marketing, and marketing in the same methods occurs in everything including Intel. How much the end product delivers is what makes end users justify and forget about the initial marketing hypes and claims, and in this case Phenom didn't deliver, so now everything is going to turn into a severely dullish critique and outlook than would've been if the product was better than C2D/equal to Penryn. Like "simulated" reviews have shown, 2.6GHz K10 and 3.2GHz Penryn are power hogs compared to the next lower product. Also, on stock coolers, they are running very hot in stability tests, around 55-58C, which just confirms their TDPs and problems again. The main problem lies in the fact that while Intels upcoming products are ahead on clock-per-clock performance, they are also far ahead on overclock, overclocker favored benches, ~1GHz ahead on core frequencies at the same TDP. This is a major problem discussed during analyst critiques.

Sorry KTE but that is absolute horse$#it. AMD worded that the way they worded it, not mine or anyone else understanding or interpretation, they just flat out obfuscated=P They later toned it down to 20% and that's a lie as well. I could fill this thread with lies like;

http://insidehpc.com/2007/05/23/amd-...elona-results/

AMD did not test Barcelona’s performance against one of Intel’s quad-core Clovertown Xeon processors, but Allen said Barcelona “will be the highest-performing x86 chip out there. It will blow away Clovertown.”

What in the heck does that mean? AMD's Fans blow harder LOL! Then every website on line from here, MaxPC, [H], ARS, TR, Anand, AMDZone and everyone else didn't understand AMD WOW. AMD said 40% faster in a wide verity of workloads and NOT just Spec LOL! I don't care why they lied, I just pointed out that they lied Then maybe, just maybe you and the other guy is smarter than everyone else on line who were briefed by AMD.

[JumpingJack]

They clarified it to their major business customers, my uncle is one so I'm aware as he told me around September 8th. I posted this back then in the Barcelona thread as well. They said the 40% refers to the same thing you are stating, and they even gave figures for the 2.6GHz version. That would mislead anyone who didn't understand what marketing is and that making such a statement was literally impossible for them over Clovertown and Harpertown, so there had to be a catch and small print involved as there is with anything nowadays. The "40%" value doesn't hold for most workloads in the server segment I've seen, although in comparison to Clovertown K10h is obviously much more on par then with the next gen 45nmm part.
Unfortunately, this is marketing, and marketing in the same methods occurs in everything including Intel. How much the end product delivers is what makes end users justify and forget about the initial marketing hypes and claims, and in this case Phenom didn't deliver, so now everything is going to turn into a severely dullish critique and outlook than would've been if the product was better than C2D/equal to Penryn. Like "simulated" reviews have shown, 2.6GHz K10 and 3.2GHz Penryn are power hogs compared to the next lower product. Also, on stock coolers, they are running very hot in stability tests, around 55-58C, which just confirms their TDPs and problems again. The main problem lies in the fact that while Intels upcoming products are ahead on clock-per-clock performance, they are also far ahead on overclock, overclocker favored benches, ~1GHz ahead on core frequencies at the same TDP. This is a major problem discussed during analyst critiques.

Well, I did not mean to imply it wasn't misleading... however, I would stop short of calling them 'liars'. Every company takes liberties in ways they describe their product, especially in market so hotly contested as this market.

Personally, yeah I think it was a bit misleading, but shortly after (I assume once they had real data), they backed off of that position. Technically, they were not 'lying', however as a consumer I am a bit disappointed because it does appear to have been artificially inflated.

[JumpingJack]

On Anand's charts even a 2.6 Phenom, which will be out God knows when, loses to the Q6600 on 11 of 15 benchmarks, and we are only weeks away from the full Yorkfield lineup. Then AMD is going to need at least 2.8GHz, and more like a 3.0 to even try to match the bottom York quad. There isn't even a roadmap now with that on it.

Right now it's not clear when, or if, there will ever be an overlap.

A couple of sites made note that AMD would need to be ahead of Intel 200 MHz or so to achieve parity .. this is a bit off as the relative % compared to IPC is lower at higher clocks. For AMD to be even with a 3.0 GHz Yorksfield, they would need about 3.3 or slightly higher bin. This is not likely going to happen on their 65 nm process.

[Donnie27]

That's pretty damn idiotic... So if AMD had released the 2.2 and 2.3 versions only when they had the faster versions available, and when Intel had already the slower C2Q versions, so that there was plenty overlapping, then phenom woudn't be worse then prescott,

K10 will end up being 15% slower then penryn, Prescott was a lot more slower then that.

Not in every benchmark. Hotscott still ruled the Streaming apps until X2 shipped. Until then, most folks saw it as Multimedia vs Games where Intel and AMD did respectively. Phenom ain't bad, not bad at all. Its just NOT as good as the competition. There Nothing wrong with buying the 2nd best. The problem is trying to convince others it's not the 2nd best to justify your decision.

To: mongoled

Pointing out the obvious is not trolling LOL! Dispariging comments about any Company shouldn't upset anyone here. That is unless you're an AMD employee, stock holder or etc.........

[Ubermann]

I wished it was faster clock for clock or at least the same.
Then Intel cpus would drop a little bit more.
I just hope we dont get those sick high prices we had when AMD was topdog.

[Donnie27]

I wished it was faster clock for clock or at least the same.
Then Intel cpus would drop a little bit more.
I just hope we dont get those sick high prices we had when AMD was topdog.

QFT!