AMD Phenom With B3 Stepping: First Look

[Mathos]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The FX-60 and the rest of that 400W rig aren't going anywhere. This next processor is for a TV/HTPC computer. I would have just used the FX-60/2900XT except I am now paying for electricity and 400W for TV/movies is too much. A low Phenom would definitely be a step down from an FX-60 since they are close clock-for-clock.

For the HTPC I'd go with the 9150e then, and a 780g board. Should be able to handle anything you throw at it as far as DVD's, blue ray playback without much problem. A 1.8ghz Athlon 64 single core can almost handle blueray playback on the 780g or 780g with a 3470 in hybrid crossfire. With Vista or XP with a multi threaded player app, it will spread the load across all 4 cores so it shouldn't see any hickups, plus the hybrid setup with a phenom installed should see playable performance on most games if you try and do that.

I only wish Sapphire would put a CPU or GPU version of their VaporX cooler out for use on other cards. Would be the bomb for extreme low profile htpc cases. if you can't tell I picked up a sapphire toxic edition recently with the vaporX single slot cooler on it.

 

[sailer]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

Ok, now I understand. For what you intend, I'd guess a 9100/9150 would do the job fine.

 

[endyen]

AMD was only interested in fixing the bug. They have lost tons of server sales, so the fix was #1 for thier bottom line.
If you're lucky, thr 9850 will oc 100mhz more than the 9600BE.
For those who say 3ghz+ is a waste, may I remind you that there are people who use thier comps to run photoshop, to encode, to do multiply tasks etc. Wth today's chips, faster is better.

 

[yipsl]

anyway, i hope AMD can compete .. so intel's prices can go down, if not... then AMD must sell their chips at a lower price.. to compete with intel...

That's the one argument from Intel fans that bothers me the most. Then again, I hope that AMD will return with an architecture that not only competes but gets them a much larger market share. I still believe they were denied market share in the Athlon 64/X2 days because of anticompetitive OEM agreements. They should do well with OEM's now, but Intel needs to compensate AMD for losses.

I don't want your CPU's to be cheaper, I want my CPU's to be cheaper but still high enough to earn AMD both market share and a good profit. I want people to realize that Intel inside meant bad CPU's at a premium price for many years, and that even though their CPU's are quite good now, that they're still at a premium that may not be worth it outside the enthusiast desktop market (a small market by the way, and I say that as a budget enthusiast/mainstream gamer -- if a 3870x2 can be considered mainstream).

For the HTPC I'd go with the 9150e then, and a 780g board. Should be able to handle anything you throw at it as far as DVD's, blue ray playback without much problem. A 1.8ghz Athlon 64 single core can almost handle blueray playback on the 780g or 780g with a 3470 in hybrid crossfire.

Yep, I said when gamers flamed the low power, low clocked announcement of a Phenom @ 1.8 that it would be perfect for an HTPC with Blu-ray. In fact, I plan on building one later this year after I upgrade my PC to Phenom 9750 or so; and after we get a nice LCD TV capable of 1920 x 1200. The TV's iffy so I might just use a 24" monitor instead.

We mostly use our old Magnavox's for retro console games (i.e. PS, PS2, N64, Dreamcast, Gamecube) and watch TV on our monitors anyways. Sometimes, we'll put on the Weather channel, but that's about it.

I do wish AMD would make more AIW cards. A nice AIW 4870x2 would be perfect! For anyone who laughs, the AIW Radeon 8500 128 and AIW 9800 Pro we had were great gaming cards for their generations, as was the AIW X800. Only with the X1800 and X1900 did you see gaming cards that substantially beat the AIW versions.

 

[coret]

yipsl ... then they made the AIW x1900 to fix that problem ^^

 

[jackieboy]

I don't know why you guy have to overclock everything...Amd processors never were the overclock king anyway....they just run good and smooth and when these new processors come out they will be able to handle everything thrown at them....and have good prices on them.....if you want to spend a fortune and overclock the SH&^ out of your computer till it breaks go buy an intel. I prefer price and reliability!

 

[yipsl]

yipsl ... then they made the AIW x1900 to fix that problem ^^

Yes, but the AIW X1900 was clocked lower than the X1900XT, so it wasn't equal as a gaming card. Though there was a faster Radeon 9800 XT, the AIW Radeon 9800 Pro was clocked as fast as the regular Radeon 9800 Pro. At any rate, we didn't go PCIe till 2007, so I missed out on newer AIW cards.

I'm upgrading my son's PC to a 780G board with an X2 4200+ and he'll get a 3470 for hybrid Crossfire later. What I can't wait is to put an 8450 on my wife's 690G board and a 9750 or 9850 on a 780G board for my PC.

The main kvetch I have with AMD is that they delay their products too much nowadays. When I ditched that old Nvidia 405 board, I wanted a 780G but had to go 690 instead. I got a "V" version because I didn't care if it would take a Phenom later. It was a four or five month solution.

All the rest of you guys kvetching about Intel not releasing this or that should just send snail mail letters to Ottelini pleading loyalty, so maybe he'll release those high end Yorkies. It's not AMD's fault that Intel won't release good products that they're holding back. It's Intel's fault. Just as they pawned lousy 31 pipeline Netburst products on their fans during the last days of Pentium D, so they are getting rid of their older Allendale, Conroe and Kentsfield inventory through a "shortage" of Wolfies, Penryns and a delay of Yorkies. Isn't it great to be a henchman of the Evil Empire of CPU manufacturing? Just don't blame the second tier manufacturer when Intel delays.

 

[enigma067]

Well we don't know if it OC's further and we don't know for sure if it uses the same /more/less power....put we should expect the same.

What we do know is that the TLB "bug" which has only showed up in a -lab- so far is fixed.
To be honest this "bug" has never been seen outside of a -lab-.....so good call for AMD fixing the -bug- anyhow after first recalling past shipments.

Perhaps near end of the year they will ship a 3Ghz product.
No matter the maker in real life after you hit 3Ghz only a benchmark can tell if a game runs any better...and almost all software is still P4 rated.

3Ghz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7EZmYth6TM

My next system!

 

[spud]

3Ghz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7EZmYth6TM

My next system!

LOL you just didn't post that... oh wait you did LOL.

Word, Playa.

 

[nightsc]

I think I'll just buy a A64 X2 till 45nm Phenom instead of waiting 9550, the wait is getting too long T_T
Is it true that 7th April will have another cut-price for AMD CPUs?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Yes, but the AIW X1900 was clocked lower than the X1900XT, so it wasn't equal as a gaming card. Though there was a faster Radeon 9800 XT, the AIW Radeon 9800 Pro was clocked as fast as the regular Radeon 9800 Pro. At any rate, we didn't go PCIe till 2007, so I missed out on newer AIW cards.

I'm upgrading my son's PC to a 780G board with an X2 4200+ and he'll get a 3470 for hybrid Crossfire later. What I can't wait is to put an 8450 on my wife's 690G board and a 9750 or 9850 on a 780G board for my PC.

The main kvetch I have with AMD is that they delay their products too much nowadays. When I ditched that old Nvidia 405 board, I wanted a 780G but had to go 690 instead. I got a "V" version because I didn't care if it would take a Phenom later. It was a four or five month solution.

All the rest of you guys kvetching about Intel not releasing this or that should just send snail mail letters to Ottelini pleading loyalty, so maybe he'll release those high end Yorkies. It's not AMD's fault that Intel won't release good products that they're holding back. It's Intel's fault. Just as they pawned lousy 31 pipeline Netburst products on their fans during the last days of Pentium D, so they are getting rid of their older Allendale, Conroe and Kentsfield inventory through a "shortage" of Wolfies, Penryns and a delay of Yorkies. Isn't it great to be a henchman of the Evil Empire of CPU manufacturing? Just don't blame the second tier manufacturer when Intel delays.

Yea, yea yea. Same old same old. Thats great. Just do what you plan to do and stop wasting space telling us it again and again.

And for someone who states he isn't a fanboy you sure do sit there and blab abotu how great the Phenom will do with longer pipelines. Then you bash Intel for their long pipeline CPU. Then you bring up the OEM crap. Don't only blame Intel. It was the OEMs too. Obviously they wanted only Intel and not to have AMD cuz they signed too.

Personally I don't care about the past. What happened happened and there aint a thing we can do to change that. And yes AMD did get a lot of market share for their small manufacturing capacity. They went from about 10% to almost 35% + and for their capabilities thats pretty good. But when you can't produce as many products as the big guys you wont be able to just up and take over the entire market.

I am still waiting for a review on the B3 Phenoms. See if they change anything or are just the same minue TLB Errata.

 

[epsilon84]

Yea, yea yea. Same old same old. Thats great. Just do what you plan to do and stop wasting space telling us it again and again.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I've been waiting for someone else to notice that... too much dejavu for my liking, sometimes I'm wondering if I'm reading the same post twice. 😉

Yipsl, with all due respect, we don't need a rerun of your upgrade plans in every thread.