Phenom 9900 review

[cdawall]

http://img.techpowerup.org/071220/untitled913.png

That is a very interesting result.

The Phenom 9900 generally took first place in business applications and memory oriented benchmarks - sometime with quite a margin.

The Phenom consistently beat the Xeon X3210 for the gaming tests, and was generally trounced by the much more expensive QX6700 (DUH).

Now if we end up the rankings... we see that over the whole set of benchmarks the Phenom 9900 was not far behind the QX6700 in the number of first place finishes!

Moral of the story:

The Phenom 9900 running at 2.66GHz DEFINITELY outperforms a Xeon X3210 running at 2.13GHz - as it should.

For gaming, at unrealistically low resolutions for todays gamers, the QX6700 badly beats the Phenom 9900 - but no one really games at those resolutions, and as World In Conflict shows, modern games are GPU not CPU bound.

Frankly, the Phenom 9900 did much better against the QX6700 than I had expected. Now if the BIOS on the motherboard allowed finer grained control over memory speed settings, I might have been able to squeeze even more performance out of the chip at both stock and overclocked settings; but a future BIOS revision may well take care of that.

AMD needs the 45nm shrink badly. It will address the power consumption issue - there is no question that Intel quad core processors are "greener" right now - and when that is combined with the purported architectural enhancements, and the ability to ramp up the clock speed due to lower voltage 45nm designs generating less heat, Intel may again have some real competition for the high end next year.

But you know what?

The consumer wins already. If aggressively priced, the Phenom 9900 - and upcoming lower end "Black Edition" Phenom's - will present an excellent value proposition to consumers, and provide a very viable alternative in the low and mid-range markets.

source=neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/phenom_9900/)

[pbmaster]

Read this the other day. Makes me feel a bit better now.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

itsnt a QX6700 teh outgoing tech?

[Basard]

^ ya me too.

[cdawall]

Except the q6600 overclocks to 3.2ghz+. The phenom cant do that.

So basically, the phemom is ok IF you dont overclock and you have memory orientated applications.

This doesnt apply to 90% of the people on TPU.


these chips still have buggy bioses but this is for you ;)

Overclocking

After the problems AMD has had in getting higher speed grades of the Phenom to market, I was initially worried about the overclockability of the Phenom 9900. It is less than three weeks since the release of the Phenom 9600, and I could only overclock our Phenom 9600 to 2.645GHz!

Fortunately it looks like the Phenom 9900 AMD sent us is a newer stepping - B2 to be precise - and even though it is not the fabled B3 stepping that will fix TLB erratum, it does seem to have opened up some extra "elbow" room.

How much?

How does a stable 3.0GHz strike you?

Mind you, I had to replace the stock AMD cooler with its sticky heatsink compound with a Noctua 12 and Arctic Silver - but that dropped the CPU temperature by a whopping 15'C when idling at 3GHz!

In order to run at 3GHz, I did the following:
left the FSB at 200MHz
set the multiplier to 15X
raised Vcore to 1.5V
set the DRAM voltage to 2.1V
set the CPU to NB voltage to 1.42V
used a Noctua 12 with Arctic Silver

I also tried to overclock with the HT speed, however I could not get even 233x13 stable on this Asus M3A32-MVP.

[WhiteLotus]

this is news that AMD can do it. all they need is a decent price and people will flock to them

[panchoman]

amd still has some life left in it.. thank god

[btarunr]

I don't understand why AMD has to keep Kentsfield 1066 as a reference competitor when Intel Quad-core technology went two cores ahead: Kentsfield 1333, Yorkfield 1333.

amd still has some life left in it.. thank god
^ Dude that sounds a little kinda....emo. Don't worry there is something in store. :laugh:

[panchoman]

bta, you say everything bad i say about amd is emo rofl

[btarunr]

because it is. We have to be smart buyers before developing an attachment with a company. If a company gives you more for what you pay, it goes on to show the company cares for you more. I have an AMD secondary rig (X2 5400+), I have a Q6600 now which I'll keep till Q1 2009, If AMD gives me a better deal, I'll get it.

[PyroX1040]

I say, say no to this CPU, I mean really if your a gamer like me or any gamer you honestly don't need this CPU and the OC on this would cause WAY to much heat for any cooling system to take care of..

[JC316]

I say, say no to this CPU, I mean really if your a gamer like me or any gamer you honestly don't need this CPU and the OC on this would cause WAY to much heat for any cooling system to take care of..


Not at all true, Damulta had his Phenom at 2.8GHZ and it was kicking the shit out of my E4300 at 3.5GHZ. The phenom just cant keep up with the newest processors...yet

[PyroX1040]

Not at all true, Damulta had his Phenom at 2.8GHZ and it was kicking the shit out of my E4300 at 3.5GHZ. The phenom just cant keep up with the newest processors...yet

When it can let me know... I'm simply saying if your going to buy the Phenom you need to build your system around it and make sure all your parts are heavy heat resistance and to also make sure you have the cooling and power, if you're just buying it and tossing it in a standard air cooling case it's gunna suck for U!!!

[DaMulta]

This chip runs super cool.......a lot cooler than k8s

[AphexDreamer]

When it can let me know... I'm simply saying if your going to buy the Phenom you need to build your system around it and make sure all your parts are heavy heat resistance and to also make sure you have the cooling and power, if you're just buying it and tossing it in a standard air cooling case it's gunna suck for U!!!

Yeah man, you think our 90nm 6400+'s run cooler then that lol?:confused:

[Darknova]

I don't understand why AMD has to keep Kentsfield 1066 as a reference competitor when Intel Quad-core technology went two cores ahead: Kentsfield 1333, Yorkfield 1333.

It doesn't really matter to people like me who overclock, it's still 45nm after all. I'll just bump it up to 333Mhz anyway as a first step. I prefer the higher multi. The only thing stopping me getting a 1066 chip is the fact that they are more expensive (go figure).

[DanTheBanjoman]

5 out of 8 1's for the Phenom are memory performance, which is irrelevant. Who cares about memory bandwidth when it still loses in actual benchmarks. It's the same as the GHz thing, sure, the P4 won n clockspeed, still it didn't make it faster. Same applies here, sure the Phenom wins with memory bandwidth, but it doesn't make it faster in the end.

Besides, most benchmarks there aren't even specific CPU benches. Very misleading results.

[phanbuey]

5 out of 8 1's for the Phenom are memory performance, which is irrelevant. Who cares about memory bandwidth when it still loses in actual benchmarks. It's the same as the GHz thing, sure, the P4 won n clockspeed, still it didn't make it faster. Same applies here, sure the Phenom wins with memory bandwidth, but it doesn't make it faster in the end.

Besides, most benchmarks there aren't even specific CPU benches. Very misleading results.

Absolutely... Memory bandwith? whoopdeedoo... k8's still kick the crap out of Intel chips in that regard - in fact it wouldnt surprise me if a 6400+ with a decent mobo kicked the crap out of this 9900 phenom as well... Phenom is pretty far behind, but im hoping that its close and menacing enough that intel will move the goal posts a bit and release Yorkfields at higher mulis/frequencies...

[btarunr]

uh c'mon all that memory bandwidth should translate into something? be it K8 or K10. Throw a memory intensive application like O&O Defrag or encode a multi-GB .avi file into XviD and you'll still not notice any significant gain. It's not about having the bandwidth, it's about how efficiently it's utilised. Same applies even to the 4000 MT/s Hyper Transport links. These are figures that merely make a data-sheet look good...."true quad core", "Integrated memory", "320 Stream processors". Data-sheets and whitepapers...due to the required processing power...only possible with...AMD Sempron LE processors....

[wiak]

Except the q6600 overclocks to 3.2ghz+. The phenom cant do that.

So basically, the phemom is ok IF you dont overclock and you have memory orientated applications.

This doesnt apply to 90% of the people on TPU.
phenom black edition ocs to 3ghz ^^

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQzMywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
and intel fanboys will be screwed for christmas next year as they have to upgrade to a new mb, cpu and ram, when intel gets there opteron-copy nehalm out

[cdawall]

ok this has turned into another big Intel is beating AMD discussion.

if you want to post in here at least do us all a favor and

1. READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW
2. Dont post useless dribble about how AMD is comparing its midrange cpu against a $1000 intel cpu and its loosing which is somewhat not surprising seeing how AMD is thinking of listing this @$350!
3. Dont post random fanboyisms about BS that doesnt even pertain to the thread

THANK YOU!

[regan1985]

i think its good news if you have a amd mobo that will support that cpu as its a big increase in performance,but true that if you have a intel q6600 go stepping you can be thinking thank god i made the right choice and havent waited for amd!

[phanbuey]

yes but people coming in not reading the damn post and just looking at the fact it was beatin out is bullshit if your going to post read the whole damn review

also 1 person compared it to a Q6600.

and when did i belittle anyone if the were posting utter bullshit they just belittle themselves they dont need anyhelp in that catagory

yeah i removed it haha
sorry ab, that... didnt see it was YOUR thread untill a bit too late :toast:.

[cdawall]

bah this thread cant die!!! daily bump ;)

[nailzer]

amd still has some life left in it.. thank god

Ugh! Can you imagine the price of Intel CPU's without AMD? :eek:

[kwchang007]

I think we need to wait until the TLB cache error is fixed without taking a severe performance hit. Maybe phenom sales will start to pick up after that. I mean....who wants to buy a broken chip?