AMD Phenom & Spider & Intel QX9770 Comparo @ [H]

great wook kyle now the real question is when did amd see the problem with the b2 stepping i have read on the inq that its around a 10 week turn around time to fab a new stepping so will we be seeing a whole mess of b3 phenoms in the next 3 months?
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
I'm just surprised with the Scaling to 3GHZ, it showed almost no improvement, is that a bug with the ES? or just phenom sucking? Even K8s scaled better with speed.

on the flip side, I can sell my 6420 and 680i board get a 790fx and 9600 for the same price :p not too bad I'd say


and Dugg
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I don't think it is a bug.

We are comparing the Phenom scaling to 3GHz with the Intel parts scaling to 3GHz on the charts, and certainly we can all see the trend. The 3GHz Phenom numbers forgo scaling of the CPU bus by 75% and also forgo changes in the die architecture and big increases in L2 cache as we see in the Intel CPUs that we benchmarked. So if the Phenom did scale as well as the Intel processors shown, I would be very surprised.

I did not have time to do a bunch of CPU bus overclocking, but what little I did was fairly moderate before failure. This made me ask the question, why have AMD not scaled their CPU bus since it introduced K8 so many years ago? More testing is needed to see if the headroom is there. Also all the boards we had were using beta bios and there are tons of switches and figuring out which ones need to be tweaked is going to be a long road.
 
Scali2 said:
I'm still on a dualcore (E6600@3 GHz), but neither the Q6600 nor any Phenom seems to actually improve on my current performance in most applications.
At least the Q6600 should be able to overclock as far as I'm running my dualcore, but it still won't get me very far.
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Unless you are a doing some serious video or graphics editing / ecoding, there is little reason to own a quad CPU IMO. Even the game engines we see actually utilize quad core, and several do it, are still so GPU limited that even running them at "normal" resoutions with an 8800 GTX bottlenecks the system to where number of threads means very little in a quad environment.
 
maxius said:
great wook kyle now the real question is when did amd see the problem with the b2 stepping i have read on the inq that its around a 10 week turn around time to fab a new stepping so will we be seeing a whole mess of b3 phenoms in the next 3 months?
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I am going to guess that AMD was not the finder of that problem considering they were already shipping parts to server builders. I would suggest that one of their partners figured that out. I don't know what we will be seeing, but hopefully they will get it fixed quick, and early adopters can count on getting a "broken" CPU with a bios fix that can be toggled off if it impacts performance. This does not seem to be a desktop issue, but I really don't know.
 
Great review kyle, the only things i saw wrong were spelling errors, but meh. the content was amazing so :p

It was disappointing in terms of performance, but AOD seems amazing. Im not sure about AMD at this point myself though... Id consider myself preferenced to AMD as im a little more intune with AMD systems in terms of overclocking and configuration, so theres a bit of bias here for personal usage preference (havent had a chance to play with a C2 personally :( im waiting for that day still.... heheh ) but this isnt very reassuring. AOD is nice, but ive played with the BIOS's of everything since the pentium 1 :p So i dont care for it as much as some of the newer guys to the game (despite me being 17 lmfao ) and i LOVED using jumpers to overclock heheh... that was fun... :D

Id go for a black edition at about the price of a Q6600 in a second if i could afford it. that seems like a GREAT deal. and if i could get an SLi motherboard for it... >_<

If they can fix the "tlb" bug im sure overclocking will be easier and need less voltage... was that the main problem in stability in the overclocks requiring the massive voltage bump? can you even check for it yourself? :S

[edit] Also, you could have some killer performance with an HD3 series graphics card to go with this that i hadnt considered for VERY little money... if the motherboards are cheap like noted, a top end CF with an overclocked phenom could be had for around 900 (mobo, 2 HD3870's, cpu ) plus cooling ram and the usuals... but youd need a beefy PSU... hmm lmao [/edit]

So thanks kyle, id digg it now, but im at school... and the firewall is gay, blocks hardforum (but i know the tech head here so... ) so i can get here, but digg doesnt work right through them >_< (BTW, SSL proxies FTW. instant ignore :D )

Cliff notes for the lazy and the genmayers...

AOD looks useful, not to me though. thank you AMD for the support though.
BE sounds like a great idea (are you looking Intel? :p )
Review has spelling mistakes, but who the fuck cares? :p its mostly a few tenses... i cant remember... :p
Overclocking concerns...
[edit]Revelation of budget bombshell[/edit]
school firewalls suck.
 
Bloody hell.

Looks like AMD might be better off just making budget video cards and chipsets.

Spider setup w/ a C2D would be rather interesting ;)
 
No wonder Hector is leaving ...because sure as all hell he was going to be given the boot after todays reviews.

Wow...just plain wow. This just rounds out the most perfect year of disappointments for me on the hardware front. Never again will I wait for another platform ever again.

I was the classic example of a die hard fan that waited and waited and waited for ATi and AMD to deliver this year and after all this time I could have traded the misery, waiting and angst for a great gaming experience if I had just bought what was best at the time.

Shame on me.

Thanks for another great review Fellas and as for Intel\Nvidia...welcome back into my happy home.
 
i wasn't that dissappointed with the Phenom performance. It looks to be good value for the performance and price you're getting; the highest end intel processors cost 5x as much. So while we haven't seen AMD take the performance crown back today, its good to see a strong push with a good value processor into the market.

Given that, the fact that you can combine 4x3870's and get that great AOD tool through the Spider platform, I'd say the Phenom has the edge on the Q6600 despite being similarly priced and of similar performance.
 
ZXQ said:
Bloody hell.

Looks like AMD might be better off just making budget video cards and chipsets.

Spider setup w/ a C2D would be rather interesting ;)
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I made a joking comment to an AMD official last week that it seems to be turning into VIA....and I really do not think that is going to happen, but they still have a couple years of hurdles to clear. I am hearing good things about R700, but then again, I heard lots of good things about Phenom too.
 
*surprise*

AMD leaves its fans with blueballs. I'm not happy this is the case, but I can't say I didn't see it coming.
 
|CR|Constantine said:
No wonder Hector is leaving ...because sure as all hell he was going to be given the boot after todays reviews.

Wow...just plain wow. This just rounds out the most perfect year of disappointments for me on the hardware front. Never again will I wait for another platform ever again.

I was the classic example of a die hard fan that waited and waited and waited for ATi and AMD to deliver this year and after all this time I could have traded the misery, waiting and angst for a great gaming experience if I had just bought what was best at the time.

Shame on me.

Thanks for another great review Fellas and as for Intel\Nvidia...welcome back into my happy home.
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I will tell you this, AMD had no plans for a Black Edition 2.3GHz Phenom last week. I explained to AMD that their true fan-base was going to be pissed off. I think the Black Edition is needed to pacify some of the people that are in the exact situation you are in. I look at the BE as an olive branch to those that are brand loyal. Maybe that is not enough, but I have to give them credit for getting an unlocked processor punched through the AMD bureaucracy in less than 3 days.

And I am not privy to what you are going to purchase video card-wise, but AMD is in that game at sub-$250 price points with solid products. Certainly if you are going to spend $300 or more, NVIDIA is the way to go today.
 
raine7337 said:
i wasn't that dissappointed with the Phenom performance. It looks to be good value for the performance and price you're getting; the highest end intel processors cost 5x as much. So while we haven't seen AMD take the performance crown back today, its good to see a strong push with a good value processor into the market.

Given that, the fact that you can combine 4x3870's and get that great AOD tool through the Spider platform, I'd say the Phenom has the edge on the Q6600 despite being similarly priced and of similar performance.
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It will shine through soon that it is not all that bad, but the disappointment overall that has been delivered to the hardware community just sucks. I think this has depressed many enthusiasts that simply expected much much more. :(
 
So did they launch today or not? I only see them one place online and they are sold out.
 
the processor is the low point of the platform, the real savings come in on the 790FX :) $177 for TOP END BOARD with quad xfire, sas, etc = WIN!
 
All I have to say is that the continued use of the SB600 on the 790FX platform is sickening.

AMD/ATI needs to get it together with their south bridges or stop using their own. The Phenom processors themselves are a bit dissappointing, but it's not as though they are absolute crap or anything. I can see these shining as overclocked parts in the lower price ranges.
 
Dugg!

Disappoint. Especially after how AMD ran the hype machine day and night over these chips. Really disappointing.

On a funny note, I was wrong about them competing with Conroe, but getting eaten alive by Yorkfield. Yorkfield wasn't even necessary for Intel to win this war! ;)
 
Excellent read! Dugg as well.

I have a noob question, I thought I had read at some point that Phenom would work in existing AM2 boards with a bios flash. Is this still the case?

Thanks
 
Hmm, that is a disappointment. All my own built system have been AMD and since I was looking to upgrade about now I was hoping for a good showing from the phenom.

Was going to start OCing on my new system for the first time. The 3 chips in the running for me are an unlocked 9600, q6600, or wait for a q9450. Any advice?
 
When on the highschool track team we always did Indian races where you and your teammates would jog in a single file line. The person in the back had to sprint to the front. The more people in the line, the longer the sprint. But the benefit of this is that more people that did this, the stronger you became. AMD failed to sprint to the front again and had to fall back. When you fail to make the sprit you not only failed, but you wasted a lot of energy. Since you aren't at the front of the line you have less "jog time" and thus makes it even tougher when you have to sprint again.

Right now I would not buy a Phenom with the current benchmarks. I will have to see what RL applications and a "complete pacakage" option look like. Maybe AMD can win there...but right now I'll have to recommend C2D/Q2D to my friends/family for a long term win.

The review looks great Kyle. It is much cleaner looking which makes your hard work show.
 
JustinSane said:
So if I were to buy a Phenom instead of a Q6600 to support AMD through their difficult times, would I be living up to my name or no?
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I think the real move will come with the Yorkfield Q9450 hits the shelves at $320 or so. That thing should clock to 3GHz all day long and a 1600 bus will put it at 3.2 making it a QX9770 that showed to wipe the floor with everythign in our benchmarks.
 
JustinSane said:
So if I were to buy a Phenom instead of a Q6600 to support AMD through their difficult times, would I be living up to my name or no?
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AMD is a massive capitalist corporation, they are not your friend, they only want your money

Maybe if you could get a tax write off out of it... Charitable contribution? LOL
 
eric66 said:
i still don't get why ati merged with amd
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Synergies between the brands ie: the Spider platform. Being able to sell a complete "Ultimate Visual Experience" as they call it. That way, they can launch complete platforms consisting of mobo, cpu, and vcard without having to work with a third party partner. Its all internal, and its supposed to lead to better performance, efficiency, market share, compatibility etc. etc.
 
Hmm, so much for Henri Richards bs of phenoms performance over the core 2 would be "clearly in the double digits". Or maybe he meant performance below the core 2. :rolleyes:
 
Sure the AMD Phenom might have been disapointting, but as you said, I too would have liked to see a performance comparison between similarly priced CPUs...

I personally dont care that a 800 - 1000 dolar intel CPU beats AMDs offering, and I never will. I'm still getting a 150 dolar CPU this Holiday. What I mean is you have to compare, and I was surprised you didn't, in a price-to-performance ratio... otherwise its pointless for people trying to choose between the Phenom and a similarly price Core 2 Duo/Quad ...

The first time I bought AMD CPUs 7 years ago, I did so because you could get better or equal performance for a lesser price.

As with everything, The biggest market is the mainstream, not the high end. However, intel is probably still winning there as well....
 
Not bad at all looking at the prices they ask for the top performing Intel processors, and what they ask for any and all Intel processors over here. I'd like to return to the Intel platform that I haven't been with since the P3 age but that's simply not going to happen on a budget :/
 
LeviathanV said:
Sure the AMD Phenom might have been disapointting, but as you said, I too would have liked to see a performance comparison between similarly priced CPUs...
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Well, I did make sure that the Q6600 was right next to Phenoms in all the graphs and it sells for the same price.

$3 diff in price.
 
MrLonghair said:
Not bad at all looking at the prices they ask for the top performing Intel processors, and what they ask for any and all Intel processors over here. I'd like to return to the Intel platform that I haven't been with since the P3 age but that's simply not going to happen on a budget :/
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So let me get this straight - you're willing to spend $270 - $320 on a Phenom, but $270 for a superior Q6600 is too much? ;)

Is it just me, or does that not make sense?
 
Remember, these are the low-end quad cores, when AMD gets its act together, and fixes the L3 fubar, Intel may have something to worry about, but for now the Penryn procs that are out are the fastest things on x86. Next year could be interesting, very interesting.
 
How truly disappointing. :( If someone had told me two years ago that AMD would be in this bad a shape at the end of 2007, I would have called them a liar.

From my perspective, the only positive AMD has coming in the near future are the 3870 X2 cards.
 
dderidex said:
...but when AMD's Phenom processors couldn't Intel's high-end offering, and are competing favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline is:


It's somewhat confusing. Is being a solid midrange contender and competing on price to midrange parts...good? Or is it bad?

I can certainly understand that we were HOPING for more from AMD, but their pricing seems a pretty clear message to stop doing that, and re-adjust expectations to the midrange.

Which, really, they seem to do quite well with.
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You must not have ready the same reviews from [H] and Anand as I did :eek::confused:
 
dderidex said:
I guess the complaint is more that...

...when AMD's Radeon 3850 and 3870 couldn't touch nVidia's high-end offering, but competed very favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline was:


...but when AMD's Phenom processors couldn't Intel's high-end offering, and are competing favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline is:


It's somewhat confusing. Is being a solid midrange contender and competing on price to midrange parts...good? Or is it bad?

I can certainly understand that we were HOPING for more from AMD, but their pricing seems a pretty clear message to stop doing that, and re-adjust expectations to the midrange.

Which, really, they seem to do quite well with.
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You're missing a key point here: The 38x0 series actually ARE price competitive, Phenom, as it stands, is not.

When the 9600 is outperformed ~10% by a Q6600, and costs the same... that's a swing and a miss IMO.

AMD needs to lower their prices about $50 or so, that would give it the price/performance advantage.
 
dderidex said:
I guess the complaint is more that...

...when AMD's Radeon 3850 and 3870 couldn't touch nVidia's high-end offering, but competed very favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline was:


...but when AMD's Phenom processors couldn't Intel's high-end offering, and are competing favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline is:


It's somewhat confusing. Is being a solid midrange contender and competing on price to midrange parts...good? Or is it bad?

I can certainly understand that we were HOPING for more from AMD, but their pricing seems a pretty clear message to stop doing that, and re-adjust expectations to the midrange.

Which, really, they seem to do quite well with.
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1. The 3850 was the true homerun...not the 3870. The 3870 was just a good hit. And since they are keeping it stock w/o gouging too much...still a decent deal. However, nothing can touch the 3850 right now.

2. This is a NEW processor techonology and not a "refresh". It should be wafflestomping things. Just like when nVidia released the 8800 series. However, AMD dropped it hard. This is why it is such a let down. When you make big claims and then fail to deliver..well, duh.
 
dderidex said:
I guess the complaint is more that...

...when AMD's Radeon 3850 and 3870 couldn't touch nVidia's high-end offering, but competed very favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline was:


...but when AMD's Phenom processors couldn't Intel's high-end offering, and are competing favorably on price alone to the midrange parts, your headline is:


It's somewhat confusing. Is being a solid midrange contender and competing on price to midrange parts...good? Or is it bad?

I can certainly understand that we were HOPING for more from AMD, but their pricing seems a pretty clear message to stop doing that, and re-adjust expectations to the midrange.

Which, really, they seem to do quite well with.
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Well, first let's understand you are looking at two totally different markets that are handled very much differently and evaluated differently, but moving forward, let me directly address your comments.

3850/3870 is up to $100 cheaper than the 8800GT you are comparing to. The 3850/3870 also deliver MUCH better performance compared to the cheaper comparable 8600 cards from NVIDIA. The 3850/3870 fit in a wide pricing gap and deliver great performance for that gap.

AMD Phenom 2.3GHz today could not compete with a part that was the same price, the Q6600. In fact, it was slower. There is no range for the Phenom to fit into. Spider platform and everything else out of the question, there is no reason to buy a Phenom CPU compared to a Q6600. Consider price comparable Yorkfield is on the way, and the argument gets to be even worse.

Hopefully that helps you understand. Certainly it was explained in-depth should you care to read either article.
 
Interesting. On the one hand Intel has the top CPUs (for $1000); on the other hand to the extent that 'enthusiast' and 'gamer' coincide the test deck of games shows the CPU not being a limiting factor.

I'm sure it's more interesting for the hardware press to do shootouts of top-end parts, just like Road & Track enjoys comparing Ferraris and McLarens.

Out here in the world of limited budgets comparing apples to apples does not involving putting production ~$250 parts against pre-release $1000 parts and expressing disappointment.

Maybe Q1 of next year would be a good time to compare whatever AMD's scaled 'Phenom' to against a shipping version of Intel's QX9770 ... if AMD's even selling anything at the $1k+ mark.

(side-note: the ability to use 'Phenom' with existing AM2 boards is significant but not mentioned in this writeup)
 
I'm a bit frustrated by this turn of events.

My X2 3800+ is starting to disappoint me a bit in newer games (and the good ol' 7900GT isn't helping much either), so I've been looking forwards to Phenom as a chance to jump to quad-core without swapping out my motherboard.

With AMD's announcement of free GPU documentation, I was also hoping that open source 3D drivers for ATI cards would become possible (I'm a 64-bit Linux user by nature). So I was thinking that a Phenom+ATI setup would be the kick in the pants I'm looking for.

Unfortunately, it seems like the value proposition is a bit weak. OTOH, this might be the incentive I need to just save my damn money instead, so I can get myself what I really want (whether that's BMW's F800ST or Triumph's Sprint ST remains to be seen)
 
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