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AMD Spider Platform Review
- Anandtech |
| If you ask AMD, this is platform story; after all, who wouldn't want to combine a Phenom with the 790FX chipset and a pair of Radeon 3850 graphics cards. The problem is that you can pair up 3850s on an Intel chipset just as easily, leaving the biggest benefit to 790FX the ability to run 3 or 4 3850s, which we're not even sure is a good idea yet. There are some auto-overclocking features, but talking about Phenom's overclocking isn't really accenting one of its strong points. The platform sell is a great one to an OEM, but it's simply not compelling enough to the end user - if Phenom were more attractive, things would be different.
To make the CPU more attractive AMD desperately needs to drop the price, and from what we've heard, that will happen in Q1. From what we've seen, AMD needs to be at least 200MHz ahead of Intel in order to remain competitive - that means bringing out a Phenom 9900 that's cheaper than the Q6600, at least. If AMD can do that, it's quite possible that in early 2008 we'll have the first sub-$200 quad-core part as the 9500 drops in price. |
| rated: -- |
published: Nov 19 2007 |
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AMD Phenom 9600 & 9900 Review
- PC Perspective |
| I have no doubts that many readers of this review fill find it disappointing that AMD's Phenom processors were not competitive with Intel's high-end quad-core processors. It's hard to hide my own disappointment as I personally really wanted AMD to do well - competition makes the world go 'round and prices go down; always good things in my book. The Phenom launch isn't a total loss though thanks to the aggressive pricing that AMD is pinning on these initial CPUs; that will appeal to many enthusiasts.
I can't help but draw the analogy of the Phenom launch to that of the Radeon HD 2900 XT: it was a technologically advanced GPU that had scaling issues that kept it from competing at the high end of its market thus forcing AMD to drop prices to stay in the game. Now that AMD's HD 3800 series of GPUs has seemingly fixed that problem, they are presented another with the Phenom desktop processor. Hopefully AMD will make as quick a turnaround on this project as they did on the GPU side and we'll see the Phenoms truly compete at all price ranges. |
| rated: -- |
published: Nov 19 2007 |
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AMD Phenom 9600/9700/9900 Review
- Real World Labs |
| AMD didn’t hit a homerun with their first quad-core parts but they are in the game. How long it takes to raise clock speeds will determine if they can be competitive with the small number of people who spend more than a couple of thousand dollars on performance parts.
AMD has returned to their roots and are now following the path that gave them such a strong following with the original Athlon, make it faster and give it to them cheaper. It might not hold true for the high-end, cost is no object crowd but as it sits right now if $300 is a ceiling and not a starting point the Phenom 9000 Line is looking pretty good. |
| rated: -- |
published: Dec 15 2007 |
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Many of our readers might think that the AMD Phenom processor series is late and doesn't bring enough performance to the table and I have to agree with you. AMD needed to have this part out months ago and at 2.6GHz or higher. Hopefully, AMD can get these early BIOS bugs worked out, but in reality, they shouldn't be early bugs. Phenom has been delayed and the quad-core Barcelona server parts have been out for some time now. I'm frustrated with this launch as I am sure you are. Intel needs competition and AMD hasn't bucked up and brought it to the table with their first true quad-core processor. The ATI Radeon 3800 series on the other hand offers amazing price versus performance value and killer features for a low price. The AMD roadmap shows their next new processor series will be the Stars 45 Processor, which will be AMD's move to the 45nm process. All you die hard AMD fans can keep your hopes up that the move to 45nm will go as good, if not better, than what Intel did at 45nm.
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.
So is the Phemon phenomenal? No, not by a long shot. But as I eluded to earlier, it is a Spider and a Spider's web does get stronger as it gets nearer to completion. This concept has promise and at this time we will have to patiently wait and see if its web will get stronger as it develops. As the 790 chipset matures I would hope to see the Phenom start living up to its name. Let's hope that this is a step in the right direction for AMD. My personal thought is that it's a start.
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