Phenom B3 stepping reviews

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Sorry I would have used the edit but the it keeps coming up saying that the thread doesn't exits.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/682/1/

Edit: now its letting me edit. I have no idea what is going on.
 
Heres that xbitlabs conclusion

"I can’t say that quad-core AMD processors using new B3 stepping surprised today. Against the background of quad-core Intel processors, they still look not very convincing falling behind the competitors in terms of performance, power consumption and overclocking potential.

Nevertheless, we can’t help stressing the fact that AMD is moving in the right direction trying to improve their Phenom X4 family at any rate. Namely, they have really rapidly fixed the notorious TLB bus that harmed the image of all processors on K10 micro-architecture a lot. Moreover, they have also increased the processors clock speeds, which is a definite advantage. The top Phenom X4 processors have even managed to catch up with the youngest Core 2 Quad representatives. Unfortunately, there is no performance parity to talk about just yet, but the gap between AMD and Intel has definitely grown smaller.

But the most important thing is that AMD have adjusted their price policy in a very smart way. Namely, the official price for AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition processor is set at $235, which is less than what the cheapest quad-core Intel processor is currently selling for. AMD Phenom X4 9750 will be offered for $215, while the youngest model – Phenom X4 9550 – is priced at $195. This way AMD has finally given up unjustified illusions and is going to offer their Phenom X4 processors at reasonable and fair prices for their performance level.

And it means that quad-core AMD CPUs will become more popular as a basis for inexpensive multi-threaded systems that may be of interest to certain user groups out there. For example, as inexpensive computers for rendering and media content processing tasks.

In conclusion I would like to say that triple-core processors that AMD starts distributing among their OEM partners these days may boast even better marketing potential than Phenom X4 the way we know it today. The price of the triple-cores is going to be even more affordable despite their relatively high computational power in multi-threaded apps. Phenom X3 8600 working at 2.3GHz will sell at about $175, while Phenom X3 8400 with 2.1GHz frequency will be priced at around $150. However, we are going to discuss Phenom X3 a little later when these processors acquire B3 stepping and become available in retail segment."

Oh come on lads, it's a start!

 
Bah, AMD needs to bring on the 45nm and get those clockspeeds up and get that power consumption down. Fixing something that should have never happened in the first place on an already sub par product is not all that impressive :??:

Really it's the processors that are holding AMD's otherwise great looking platform back. I like their GPUs and motherboards a lot, but Phenom...not so much.
 


A Reasonable Conclusion.
A Step in the correct direction.
AMD, However, is going to need to NAIL the 45nm conversion if they hope to move up into higher priced brackets.
 
I liked what Anands said "Phenom could scale much higher, after all the individual cores aren't all that more complex than those in an Athlon 64 X2. We get the impression that there are some speed paths that could be optimized on the current B2 and B3 Phenoms that simply aren't because of a very sensible thought process. AMD is still on track to begin shipping its first 45nm Phenom processors (Deneb core) by the end of this year and it doesn't make sense to waste time and resources respinning a 65nm Phenom, when presumably these clock speed issues are addressed at 45nm" So maybe not quite there but close, with a lil room to spare?
 
I like to be optimastic in general but there is one thought that still comes to mind.

Going from 90nm to 65nm with the Athlons AMD was unable to increase the clockspeed (in fact clock speed decreased) and as was unable to dramatically reduce power consumption. Almost to the point that the only gains to be had where financially for AMD.

Who's to say that going from 65nm to 45nm will be anymore succsesful? Like Anand said the stars core is very close to that of the K8 core so assumptions would lead to a repeat of 90nm to 65nm.

Hopefully though like Anand's said most of AMDS's rescources are being used to perfect the 45nm process. Still I don't think Phenom will ever reach more than 3.2ghz at any node size without an extensive redesign of the core.
 
They respun it, got the max operating speed up 200mhz, and the BE northbridge is up 200 mhz also. Max overclock on xbitlabs.com's review was 2.7ghz and stable. The respin has been in the works for what seems like a very long time, but i get the impression they made some signifigant manufacturing progress getting to B3. Doesn't seem like to much to enthusiasts, but for AMD it might mean fewer duds, and cheaper production costs at their end. It is the first (now in true) mass-production native 4-core cpu (don't flame Im just stating the fact), and it would appear the manufacturing challenges in producing large cpus are formidable. That is, in a different class altogether than for dual-core dies.
 


Exactly. B3=fixed, fully functional, reliable, reputation rebuilder version 1.0. 45nm=version 2.0.
Pricing scheme is encouraging.
 
Looking at the various reviews and studying the various benchmarks 1 thing has struck me. Phenom's strength is when all the cores are maxed out. In 1 and 2 threads its really uncompetative but load up all 4 cores and it starts competing again. Which shows that scalling isn't an issue. Its purely down to single thread performance. If they can just get a little more performance out of each core Phenom would fly.

This is most obvious the in the http://techreport.com/articles.x/14424 because for every benchmark it also shows a screen shot of task manager to show which cores are doing what.
 
interesting reveiw i found
http://www.hothardware.com/articles/AMD_Phenom_X4_9850_B3_Revision/
the phenom beats the q6600 in PC mark vantage

im not saying they are better then everything intel has out just that they are finaly either winning or not far behind to the earlyest intel quad
 


They're increasing the pipelines, supposedly. If Phenom has 12 pipelines, then they could go to 20 or so and still not have major issues. That will allow for a bump up to 3.0 or 3.2 on the first SOI 45nm. Deneb is the Phenom that should have been released this April, just as B3 is the Phenom that should have been released last fall.

I have a couple of 780G ASUS boards on hand to upgrade our PC's and I'm just waiting on availability at Newegg. I'll give the 9850 a try, but I do wonder if an 8750 would be a better deal for a CPU that I'll only use until I can get my hands on a Deneb?

Tom's preview of the triple cores was very promising. If they're priced $50 below the quads, and most games utilize 2 or 3 cores at the most this spring, then a crippled Phenom might still be the one that wins the price performance race.

Of course, it will do well in OEM's due to the Spinal Tap effect, 3 cheaper cores is "faster" than 2 dual cores because it's 3. Not a bad marketing move. The OEM's will get the B2 triples, with B3 arriving in May.

Should I wait for 8750 @ 2.4 or just go 9850 @ 2.5? I won't be overclocking on a 780G board.


 
I would go with a 9850. Currently the X3's are sheduled for OEM only. The 9850 also has the NB set at the original speed of 2ghz rather than the downclocked 1.8ghz.
 
the 9850 seems to be like the phenom of choice out of them. shame none of the reviews got a 9750 to see if it clocked as well as the 9850. i know i'll be going a 9850 as soon as they come to australia to replace me 6000+ and 9500. starting to put left foot then right foot then repeat finally
 


Meh. Its still synthetic. Just like 3DMarok06. I have seen some with a X2 that get a score near a Q6600 with the same GPU. Its all too synthetic. I will admit though that the 9850 did better than I expected in some real worlld benchmarks but that might be due to the NB set to 2GHz instead of 1.8GHz, which mathos had already stated helped improve his performance.



The 9850 OC'ed a bit better than the 9550 did but still not what some would want. The review on techreport.com had it at 2.9GHz stable with a slight voltage increase. 3.1GHz, they didn't state if it was fully stable or not, had a voltage of 1.56v if I remember and I wouldn't be comfortable with that myself. But this does not mean the same for all the B3 Phenoms. I have a feeling though that not all will OC the same again as I think the OC'ing limits are architectural. But we shall see.
 


1.7v??? That sounds close to a nuclear meltdown to me :kaola:

I like the AMDZone article..... do you expect them to crtisize it at all? And getting to 3.1GHz @ 1.56v kinda makes ya wounder why. I mean Q6600's almost everyone goes 3GHz no voltage change and 3.2Ghz with a slight bump.

Good luck with that @ 1.7v. Let us know if you survive it.
 
indeed. with water cooling and fans blowing the mobo it shouldn't get that hot one would hope but hey you never know with 4 cores with stupid voltages. its always fun to play. sometimes we play rough sometimes we play gentle
 


Well, I'm not sure I agree with the TechReport's Definition of Stable which is primarily booting.
Most of the other sites consider Stable when it can actually run through all of the various benchmarks w/o crashing.
(Still not as good as running a super intensive test, but better than what TechReport said.)

But I go agree that the new BE should get you an extra 100-200Mhz Increase on top of the slight bump due to the higher HT bump.

 


Well most of their non stables were unable to post. That would normaly call for a voltage increase.

But I did see Anands report of it. They got to 2.8GHz on thier chip stable with a much lower Vcore, thus is why I think that each Phenom 9850BE will have their own OC potential. But thats why we need to see a variety of reports and OC's to see what the Phenoms magic number is, kinda like the Q6600's is about 3.6GHz max on air.
 
Phenom that interests me is the AMD Phenom X4 9100e. Currently its OEM only and B2 stepping but the B3 stepping version should be pretty interesting. TDP 65W 1.8ghz should overclock to 2.6ghz at least and should cost no more than $180. Perfect for a simple work machine.
 

4 cores for a simple work machine? If you don't mind me asking, what line of business are you in?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom