Phenom 9700, AMD's 1st Quad-Core CPU

[caamsa]

Hell I like the fact that my AM2 6000+ is still kickin butt in the benchmarks against these new chips. I am not sure what is gonna help AMD catch up. They tested phenom on a new chipset so I imagine phenom is doing the best it can at this point. I don't know all the technology that goes into making a cpu but some how it looks like AMD missed something.

Well I am sure they will still stay competitive in the low to mid range. In a way it does not matter so much in gaming since a high end GPU is what you want. In all the other applications that is a different story. At least they got this one out the door.

For those who have a high end AM2 dual core process I see no reason to upgrade. My 6000+ looks good for at least another year.

 

[BaronMatrix]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/index.html


Benchmarks are in. Even the highest clocked Phenom which will not be available for a while gets its silicon handed to it in every single benchmark by Intel. Heck, even the top K8's made breakfast out of Phenom in single threaded applications.

Not good for AMD.

All I can say is WOW. I'm just amazed that in most benchmarks even Intel's first "double cheeseburger" quad-core schools Phenom in all it's native glory. This means that AMD will have to bargain price their chips, as their best (but very unavailable chip) won't be shipping for what some estimate as months.

I think you're exaggerating a slight bit. I was waiting for today because I knew over the 10 or 12 reviews, the numbers would be all over the place depending upon the components and testing. Some benchmarks aren't even seeing dual channel memory. Just go through all of the benchmarks and you'll see that perhaps the L3 errata is causing problems when not above 2.4GHz.

There is definitely something going on. Hopefully someone will actually use a 2.4GHz X2 against the 2.4GHz Phenom. That will show if there is indeed an issue holding back performance as most things in the tests are scaling at up to 100%+ with the jump to quad. And when you consider that the X2s used were all at least 2.8GHz up to 3.2GHz, that's a 16-33% clockspeed advantage. This is significant in both CrySis and the Valve demo, which will be the gaming engines of the future.

I think you're all just looking for an excuse.

Good job AMD. Keep working at it. 2008 is looking really good. I mean X2 continuously improved throughout it's ife and Phenom will also.

 

[epsilon84]

you say p965's eh? hmmmm can you show me where you get this info?

http://event.asus.com/mb/45nm/

 

[turpit]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/index.html


Benchmarks are in. Even the highest clocked Phenom which will not be available for a while gets its silicon handed to it in every single benchmark by Intel. Heck, even the top K8's made breakfast out of Phenom in single threaded applications.

Not good for AMD.

All I can say is WOW. I'm just amazed that in most benchmarks even Intel's first "double cheeseburger" quad-core schools Phenom in all it's native glory. This means that AMD will have to bargain price their chips, as their best (but very unavailable chip) won't be shipping for what some estimate as months.

I am very suprised at the THG results. In many cases the dual core (not the quad) 6600 beats the Phenoms.....not good at all, but it makes me wonder if the testing was screwed up.

On the other hand, they do have a catchy logo, so they've got that going for them

 

[wirelessfender]

"We already have boards made by Asus, Gigabyte and MSI in our lab, all of which work flawlessly with the Phenom processor. According to AMD, MSI's board is currently the best pick, though.

Why? Explanation please? I kind of liked the asus model more for its features... But its also $60 more. I hate statements like that because they just help add confusion to decision making.

 

[BaronMatrix]

I don't agree. The margins on those processors are going to be much smaller. Intel is able to sell its processors for much more because they perform more. However, the cost to make them is relatively the same.

I'm interested to see how the stock market reacts to the failure of a launch.

Wow, no wonder the world is so slanted towards the larger corporations. No one will really support the smaller ones. Once I find the water cooled case Tomz or Anand reviewed, I will start building my new Phenom system. I just have to be slower than Intel. I HAVE TO!!!!

 

[cnumartyr]

All i can see is this new quad is basically newer with better features and a longer life cycle. I was ready to buy and i got excited when i looked at the article. But upon reading it and finding that it really doesnt perform any better than my 6000+ in the app's that I use i cant justify buying it at this point. Hell who know's though...I may Ill give it a couple more day's and then make my decision.

Just wait for the B3 revision. Should see higher clocks.

 

[epsilon84]

Wow, no wonder the world is so slanted towards the larger corporations. No one will really support the smaller ones. Once I find the water cooled case Tomz or Anand reviewed, I will start building my new Phenom system. I just have to be slower than Intel. I HAVE TO!!!!

Theatrics aside, are you waiting for B3 before upgrading or are you diving right in?

 

[bfellow]

Anandtech showed Phenom seems to do ok in Crysis demo which might be using only 2 cores. The UT3 and Valve shows C2Q crushing all the Phenoms

 

[cnumartyr]

Wow, no wonder the world is so slanted towards the larger corporations. No one will really support the smaller ones. Once I find the water cooled case Tomz or Anand reviewed, I will start building my new Phenom system. I just have to be slower than Intel. I HAVE TO!!!!

Atleast you stay on the ship while it is sinking...

And I agree to a point. AMD will be fine. People will still buy AMD. At the end of the day Intel holds the overall performance crown still.

Btw.. what excuse do we need? K10 is slower than Penryn clock for clock. Even if it was FASTER than Penryn, the new Penryns can push clocks higher.

 

[turpit]

Theatrics aside, are you waiting for B3 before upgrading or are you diving right in?

Probably none of the above. This looks like the begining of another 3 month rant...the same as he subjected the forums to as when he claimed he would be getting a 4x4 system last year

 

[coldmast]

AMD, I said I wanted 3.2 Ghz, not 2.3
not quite the drop-in I wanted doesn't give me the road map I want... yet

I wonder how much the phenom is bottlenecking the 4x3800 configuration.
I also always wonder why intel dropped the price of the Q6600 so much, well I guess AMD just answered that question.
still in shock (at the lack of competitive pricing at 2.4Ghz) after all the waiting to see if AMD had something up their sleeve (hopefully they still do). Clock for clock Core2 still looks better.

MSG to AMD: get your $#!% together.

 

[cnumartyr]

Theatrics aside, are you waiting for B3 before upgrading or are you diving right in?

Any "enthusiast" that jumps right into the Phenom X4 on this revision has issues. B3 will be where their sales come from.

It'd almost be a good PR move to scrap the X4s and wait on B3 for a launch.. Unfortunately I doubt they could afford that. So instead they launch 1 bin short of what was already short binned.. And it's hit or miss to OC it past 2.4 GHz.

It's a sad day for AMD. I wanted them to compete. This launch is pretty sad though.

 

[asdasd123123]

Just thought I might mention, it seems to me like Tom's signed an agreement with AMD to let AMD read over their article and make it benefiting to AMD.

Hardly, did you see the Phenom 9900 in Toms benchmark?
Nah, didn't think so.

 

[gwolfman]

Direct quote(s) from the article:

For reference, Intel sells its smallest quad-core CPU, the Intel Core 2 Q6600, which is also rated at a TDP of 95 W, for around $323. These prices are for the box versions.

Last I checked the Q6600 can be had for $279...

The AMD Phenom 9500 (2.20 GHz) will sell for only $248 (€169), while the Phenom 9600 (2.3 GHz) comes with a price tag of $279 (€190).

Which which happens to be the exact same price as the Q6600, which makes it the same price, yet the Phenom is still 13.5% slower!

Viewed from a price/performance perspective, we can say that at this price, AMD's processor offers about the same value for money as Intel's Q6600 quad-core part.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong (if your AMD pricing is right, because I know your Intel pricing is wrong). Please update the article!

 

[elbert]

True, but I didn't expect K10 to be such an advancement that a 2.3 GHz part could out perform a 3.2 GHz part in "single" threaded apps.

I got to agree with that as the X2 6400+ 3.2GHz beat even the QX6700 on some benchmarks. In the vast majority of benchmarks, except for heavily threaded ones of course, the X2 6400+ is still faster than the Q6600. Just to name a few Clone DVD2, Lame, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop CS3, WinRAR, AVG Antivirus, Serious Sam 2, Quake 4 nearly, prey nearly, and UT2004 being mostly the ones where the C2D's beat the Phenom 9700.

I just wonder how this would turn out if this was 4 HD3870 on a AMD platform against 2 8800 Ultra's on an Intel platform? January could get very interesting for gamers.

 

[elbert]

Direct quote(s) from the article:

For reference, Intel sells its smallest quad-core CPU, the Intel Core 2 Q6600, which is also rated at a TDP of 95 W, for around $323. These prices are for the box versions.

Last I checked the Q6600 can be had for $279...

The AMD Phenom 9500 (2.20 GHz) will sell for only $248 (€169), while the Phenom 9600 (2.3 GHz) comes with a price tag of $279 (€190).

Which which happens to be the exact same price as the Q6600, which makes it the same price, yet the Phenom is still 13.5% slower!

Viewed from a price/performance perspective, we can say that at this price, AMD's processor offers about the same value for money as Intel's Q6600 quad-core part.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong (if your AMD pricing is right, because I know your Intel pricing is wrong). Please update the article!

Your comparing the lowest to an average. The 9600 in some shops may sale as low as $250. The AMD price is the suggested retail price which street price can be lower.

 

[cnumartyr]

I got to agree with that as the X2 6400+ 3.2GHz beat even the QX6700 on some benchmarks. In the vast majority of benchmarks, except for heavily threaded ones of course, the X2 6400+ is still faster than the Q6600. Just to name a few Clone DVD2, Lame, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop CS3, WinRAR, AVG Antivirus, Serious Sam 2, Quake 4 nearly, prey nearly, and UT2004 being mostly the ones where the C2D's beat the Phenom 9700.

I just wonder how this would turn out if this was 4 HD3870 on a AMD platform against 2 8800 Ultra's on an Intel platform? January could get very interesting for gamers.

Except the Intel platform will use 2x HD3870X2s. Unless you are speaking of Skulltrail. Otherwise it's an nVidian platform for SLI.

 

[skittle]

Your comparing the lowest to an average. The 9600 in some shops may sale as low as $250. The AMD price is the suggested retail price which street price can be lower.

And wasnt the Q6600s suggested retail price $266 ? One nice thing is that AMD (hopefully) will slash prices again... and i will have to rethink buying an intel chipset.

 

[cnumartyr]

And wasnt the Q6600s suggested retail price $266 ? One nice thing is that AMD (hopefully) will slash prices again... and i will have to rethink buying an intel chipset.

Phenoms will end up inflated due to lack of supply before the retailers will give the consumers any price cuts that AMD mandates.

 

[epsilon84]

I just wonder how this would turn out if this was 4 HD3870 on a AMD platform against 2 8800 Ultra's on an Intel platform? January could get very interesting for gamers.

I honestly would like to see some Quad CF scores, especially the scaling at higher resolutions, because IMO the 3870 with 'only' 512MB of VRAM is going to choke pretty badly at say 2560x1600. To see the true potential of CF-X you need GPUs with 1GB of VRAM.

As for SLI for Intel, things look pretty messy atm. nVidia is having some chipset troubles with 45nm, maybe BIOS updates will fix these but who knows. Maybe we'll have to wait for a new nVidia chipset to find out, or nVidia can get off their stubborn ass and grant Intel an SLI license for their mainstream chipsets.

 

[cnumartyr]

I honestly would like to see some Quad CF scores, especially the scaling at higher resolutions, because IMO the 3870 with 'only' 512MB of VRAM is going to choke pretty badly at say 2560x1600. To see the true potential of CF-X you need GPUs with 1GB of VRAM.

As for SLI for Intel, things look pretty messy atm. nVidia is having some chipset troubles with 45nm, maybe BIOS updates will fix these but who knows. Maybe we'll have to wait for a new nVidia chipset to find out, or nVidia can get off their stubborn ass and grant Intel an SLI license for their mainstream chipsets.

I'd like to see if the HD3870X2 does that with 2 GPUs in sync + 1 GB Ram. Or if it really is CF on a PCB with 2 seperate Memory/GPU units.

 

[elbert]

I honestly would like to see some Quad CF scores, especially the scaling at higher resolutions, because IMO the 3870 with 'only' 512MB of VRAM is going to choke pretty badly at say 2560x1600. To see the true potential of CF-X you need GPUs with 1GB of VRAM.

As for SLI for Intel, things look pretty messy atm. nVidia is having some chipset troubles with 45nm, maybe BIOS updates will fix these but who knows. Maybe we'll have to wait for a new nVidia chipset to find out, or nVidia can get off their stubborn ass and grant Intel an SLI license for their mainstream chipsets.

Heres some dual CF scores but the bottom note is probably due to the fact its not set for launch until January. Some stuff to work out and driver fixes for more games. If 2 HD3850's can do this I wonder how 2 HD3870's would compare or for that matter 4 HD3870 against 2 8800 Ultra's.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=10

 

[gwolfman]

Your comparing the lowest to an average. The 9600 in some shops may sale as low as $250. The AMD price is the suggested retail price which street price can be lower.

That means that the 9600 would have to sale for about $240 to be dead even. If his pricings are right, I doubt that'll happen for quite a while.

 

[dario77]

i've always rooted from the underdog, i've had to. growing up in detroit, i had the lions and the tigers, and if you follow sports (or at least concede my sports metaphor), you know that makes me naturally predisposed to AMD. for all of my computing life, i've built AMD. price to performance was a factor, of course (wish it still was!), but mostly it was my inner rebel, raging against the giant blue machine...
so yes, i'm a fanboy. a very sad, disappointed fanboy.
a fanboy who will doubtless cling hopefully to the idea of seeing spider in full xfire x configuration with b3 parts before giving up, despite the likelihood that none of it is going to matter a plum lick.
a fanboy who will, in six short months, be building two high end systems for feature film production.
a fanboy at a crossroads...

i've no illusions here. all signs point to the blue road. so i might ask, humbly, from all of the blue fanboys...please don't gloat, or rub it in too much. the pain we greenies feel over this awful betrayal by our company is more than enough torture, especially coupled with the hot shame of blue boxes at our doorsteps.

AMD, you used to be about the little guy. you used to price like you meant it. you have become what you bemoaned. i still love you, AMD...but get your s!?t together!