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Phenom 9900 review

Not a fan of the fact that they didnt use the same mobo for the 9600 and the 9900 reviews, and Im a little concerned with the quite rapid increase in power use after a not so high overclock but apart from that the 9900 seems like a pretty decent CPU.
 
Judging by the fact they don't have the power consumption figures of the QX6700, I'd say they didn't test it themselves and are using the avilable manufacturers figures.

And Intel and AMD use different ways of calculating and reporting their power consumption figures, so it's possible that their 'results' aren't exactly comparable.
 
Looks like a nice CPU

Trades places with the QX6700 - which has 8MB cache - but beats it on memory bandwidth and business tasks (which is to be expected). Seem to be much of the same for both CPUs

Might be worth an upgrade from my 2.8GHz FX62 then
 
Yup that doesn't seem to shabby at all. :) Seems to be swings and roundabouts really. Definately a CPU to consider, if the price is right. ;)
 
i don't think that these will be cheap enough to swing people that are currently on Intel boards to upgrade, nor do i think that its performance is high enough to persuade people upgrading (who are on AM2) to not go to the dark side :(

poor poor AMD.
 
Aod said:
i don't think that these will be cheap enough to swing people that are currently on Intel boards to upgrade, nor do i think that its performance is high enough to persuade people upgrading (who are on AM2) to not go to the dark side :(

poor poor AMD.
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Yeah, its not the most popular price point. AMD need to release a competitive Phenom at the ~£150 level. Perhaps 45nm and K10.5 will show some improvements.
 
Dont think that was a very good review imho. Shows AMD leading in synthetic benchmarks, but in virtually every case where they used a real application, be it a game, or encoding etc, the Intel beat it. But this shouldnt come as a surprise really, as the native quad and integrated memory controllers are very benificial to synthetic tests.

The review should have compared to to a Q6700 not a QX6700, as the Q6700 is considerably cheaper.

AMD faster in the 'business' applications... Great, considering that most business applications still run perfectly on 1.6Ghz entry level CPU's, its not much to brag about. Yet throw in a CPU intensive task and the Intel comes out on top.

Its about in line with other reports that the Phenom is "more or less" a match for Core 2 Quad clock for clock, but doesnt really 'beat it'

The power consumption is pretty shocking 50W increase between the 2.3Ghz Phenom and the 2.6Ghz, and another 50W to 3Ghz.

However.... all in all its not a bad looking chip, hopefully it will be sufficient to get intel to reconsider its 'less than spectacular' prices for the new Penryn Quads next year. Not sure that anyone would buy a 2.66Ghz Penryn for $530 when they could have a 2.6Ghz Phenom for $350. So lets hope AMD can keep up the pressure, and keep intels prices low :)
 
Corasik said:
Dont think that was a very good review imho. Shows AMD leading in synthetic benchmarks, but in virtually every case where they used a real application, be it a game, or encoding etc, the Intel beat it.
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The games were tested at very low, CPU-bound settings. ;)

Corasik said:
The review should have compared to to a Q6700 not a QX6700, as the Q6700 is considerably cheaper.
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And has a locked multiplier, which the Phenom doesn't have.
 
It's memory bandwith capabilities really show in some of those synthetic benchmarks. Yet it still falls behind in real world apps. Not a surprise but it's not great news either. They're not awful chips by any means. But given how they perform with respect to other Core 2's they should be priced lower.
 
sr4470 said:
The games were tested at very low, CPU-bound settings. ;)
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And the encoding apps? Anyway you just backed up my point. In real world CPU bound applications, and Intel chip is still the one with the performance.

Phenom is only really ahead in synthetic apps, especially any synthetic test which places weight on raw memory bandwidth, as with the integrated memory controller, of course phenom does well there.

Even in highly threaded media encoding apps where the native quad design should really come into play, the intel 'twin dual' ductape Quads are still doing better clock for clock.

Remember people were claiming that Phenoms would be 20% faster clock for clock than Intel Core 2's. Fact is Intel Core 2 is an exceedingly good chip, and AMD have done well to 'match' it. The days of AMD making Intel look slow are quite likely behind us. AMD were there primarily because Pentium IV was a rubbish chip, and instead of throwing it away, intel just kept putting more and more money into trying to make it run faster (and if you believe the rumors a lot of money in other peoples pockets to make sure people believed P4 was the greatest thing since sliced bread).

Next year Penryn will increase Intels lead a little more, clock for clock by a few percent, but should give a fairly easy path up to 4Ghz on the 45nm process before Nehelem is released at the end of 2008. And thats the thing, AMD are no longer facing a slow plodding giant squeezing for the last Mhz.. They are now facing a sprinter, which is upgradeing, and developing new chips every couple of years!

Hope AMD stick with it though, because its the only way to keep Intel on their toes and developing fast cheap products. (I am not the kinda person that would be pleased if AMD went to the wall)
 
Corasik said:
And the encoding apps? Anyway you just backed up my point. In real world CPU bound applications, and Intel chip is still the one with the performance.
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I didn't claim it was faster in gaming, I merely said it was doing a good job of keeping pace with the QX6700 overall. As for the multiplier comment, given the price, these are niche products aimed at enthusiasts, and the Phenom's unlocked multiplier can't possibly do any harm to its sales ;)
 
sr4470 said:
And has a locked multiplier, which the Phenom doesn't have.
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so the multipliers isn't locked on the Phenoms? ive ordered a 9500 for £133 which i will receive it on monday.. if i wanna over clock it can i just up the multipliers or is it still by the fsb? i know u can control each core independently, but how?
 
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From what I've seen, the 9500 and 9600 don't seem to be unlocked upwards anyway. Only unlocked ones I've seen are review samples who seem to be getting these to 200*15. I suppose it's why some people are eagerly awaiting the 9600 Black Edition, considering the 235HTT+ issue that people seem to be encountering. With tweaks some have been getting over that but still nothing over ~255HTT
 
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