News Headlines
- Mon, Jun 17
- Forget booth babes, IndieCade breaks the norm with booth BROS to E3 2013
- Bayonetta 2 E3 2013 Hands-On: Fighting angelic centaurs on a jet fighter, enough said?
- CD Projekt RED opening 20-person studio in Krakow to work on smaller 20-hour game
- May NPD Number Crunch: Injustice holds the fort during another weak month for the industry
- Sony UK head Fergal Gara pleased with E3 messaging, says "loads more hard work to do"
New Articles
Related Articles
Phenom 9900: 2.6GHz quad core from AMD - can it take on Core 2 Quad's head to head?
We published our Phenom 9600 review at the end of November; but in this industry, nothing stands still. Since then, AMD has been kind enough to send us a Phenom 9900 reviewer's kit, and today, we will see how it stacks up.
The kit included:
- Phenom 9900 2.6GHz Quad Core Processor
- AMD heatpipe heatsink (same as before)
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe Motherboard
- a pair of Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 5-5-5-15 modules
For our stock speed testing, we used the kit as it was sent to us, however for our overclocking tests, we switched to a Noctua NH-U 12, one of our favorite CPU coolers.
If you've read our Phenom 9600 Review, you will remember that I reviewed it from the perspective of someone who might want to upgrade an existing AM2 dual core system - and I found it to be a decent upgrade.
With the speed increase to 2.6GHz I decided to compare the Phenom 9900 to the previously reviewed Phenom 9600, and to two Intel quad core processors at their stock speeds.
- The Core 2 Quad QX6700 runs at 2.66GHz at stock speed, and I suspect that AMD will price the Phenom 9900 below the QX6700's current $949 price tag.
- The Xeon X3210 runs at 2.13GHz at stock speed, and is an excellent performer, currently selling for $247
- update: A reader pointed out that the Core 2 Quad E6700 running at 2.66GHz is available for $560
According to the rumour mill, the Phenom 9900 may be priced around the $350 mark - which while above the Xeon X3210's price, is WELL below the price of the QX6700.
As everyone knows, AMD has had difficulties with launcing the Phenom; it launched about six months after it was supposed to, at well below the originally announced 2.8GHz - 3GHz launch speeds.
On top of that, shortly after release news of the TLB erratum was spread far and wide. AMD was able to issue a microcode update that works around the problem, albeit with a reported 10%-20% performance hit, and AMD also released a patch to the Linux kernel that allows it to work around the problem while reportedly taking only a roughly 1% performance hit - one hopes that Microsoft will release a similar hotfix for XP and Vista.
Now that we have a B2 stepping of the Phenom 9900 to test (yes, it has the TLB bug) let's see how it compares to both a less expensive 2.13GHz Xeon X3210 and a more expensive, basically same clock rate, Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6700!
next
1 2
First, you assume the 3.0 GHz OC came from a new stepping, but the B2 stepping was the launch stepping -- check other reviews it is certainly B2 -- B3 will be out mid-late Q1 07, and per AMD the higher clocked parts (this part) will not be out until the April-May timeframe (see transcript of analysts day last week). You may have been lucky, one or two sites were able to get 3.0 GHz stable enough to bench, but not meany... generally topping out at 2.8 GHz or so.
Next, the QX6700 is an unlocked version of Intel's 2.67 GHz quad, the retail version is actually pricing in at $560 or so http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115027 still not cheap but running at stock, this is what could be had, a 2.5 Ghz yorksfield will launch next quarter which will come in at a rumored 250 bucks, and all indications is that will be roughly the same as a QX6700.
I am perplexed by the fine binned detail you use for summarizing 1st places, if you ignore the synthetics, right mark, Sandra, and winstone -- the score is not quite in the 9900's favor: 3 W for 9900 and 9 for QX6700 ... it is a bit misleading to show the data they way you did when it is clear mem BW will be favored on the IMC, but on DT the IMC is not a huge factor compared to a larger cache pool on the Intel chip.
It is too bad you did not take a multiplier unlocked 9650 and clock it down to 2.5 GHz (the 250 dollar Yorky intro next month or so), that would have been as informative.
Finally, your results are not that far off with other reviews, but there are higher quality reviews on the net:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/12/13/amd_phenom_9500_9600_9700_and_9900/1 (they are showing a 9900 more or less even or losing to a Q6600)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/597/9/
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10648
I realize the B2 stepping is not new - however I believe the 9600 I tested earlier was a B1 stepping; and I agree, I was lucky to get a B2 that was stable at 3.0GHz
When I did a check on NewEgg before publishing the article it showed a $949 price tag; I just repeated the search, and that was the first price for the boxed extreme processor. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115011
The price you pointed at is the non-extreme SKU, I looked up the SKU for the one I tested in the earlier review. I do appreciate the heads up and will update the article to show that the non-extreme edition is available for $560.
No need to be perplexed, I simply summarized all the tests I ran, and I am not willing to ignore any of them. We've been using the same benchmark suite for quite a while now (with occasional minor changes, like recently dropping non multi-threaded WinRAR, POV and Lame); I did not want to restrict the scoring to gaming only. I agree that the much larger cache on the Intel helps it.
I wish I had time to run more benchmarks, and compare different Intel chips - however I had a total of three days to do the review, and had to use Intel results that were already in our system from past reviews.
Best Regards,
Bill
This message was edited by bhenning on Dec 19 2007.
Thanks for the heads-up. I fixed the few minor labeling errors.
This message was edited by bhenning on Dec 19 2007.
I would love to see results with all chips overclocked cause Phenom would be clearly smashed by a 3210 at $100 less
I looked at the wrong bar on the chart. Mistakes happen... I'm correcting the article.
Best,
Bill
ofcourse an overclocked X3210 will beat an overclocked Phenom 9900 - read my review of the X3210 if you want to see the stable OC I achieved - but that was not the intent of the review, the intent was to compare stock performance, and see how high the 9900 would clock up.
I included the higher priced QX6700 as it runs at almost exactly the same stock speed, and I was frankly surprised as to how well the 9900 held up against that much more expensive chip.
edit: also cisco kid, the xenon was more for price range refence and if you compare the stock timings, it's a good reference at that. In the same price range, nothing kept up with the AMD phenom. Overclockign it, well that's something more users do on their own. In fact it was even stated they included it purely for the fact that it was in the same price range. Of course an unlocked 1000 USD chip is gonna trounce something that's nto even half it's price. Jsut wait untill AMD releases the Phenom FX. didn't they tought the new FX name ot be Phenox? or Phenoix or something... I could never remember my mythical creatures... and to think I saw a unicorn the other day.
If I had missed where you clarified this my apologies.
Thanks
Two things to keep in mind:
1. Wait for hte B3 stepping. Seirously
2. The intell won because it's a higher standard chip, meant to be for gamers. The Phenom was meant for buisinessed, althgouh stil nice.
3. Wait for hte Pheonix, or whatever the gaming desktop edition will be called now.
next
1 2