Higher Clock Speeds, No TLB Issues and Better Pricing: The New Phenom
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 27, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking B3, a Little Better
Despite the new 50 series CPUs being a new spin of silicon, the only changes AMD made (that we are aware of at least) were to fix the TLB erratum. We were told not to expect any significant increases in clock frequency out of B3, it was simply a functional change. However, with Phenom having been in production for a little while now it's possible that we could get a little more out of our B3 chips than the first Phenom processors we tested late last year.
Using stock cooling on air we wanted to see how things had changed in four months. Armed with our unlocked Phenom X4 9850, we wanted to see what was possible.
We went straight for 2.8GHz at stock voltage, which surprisingly enough POSTed and got us into Windows without any problems. The system wasn't stable enough to complete most of our benchmarks however, we needed to boost the core voltage a bit:
Note that this is better than any of our previous attempts with Phenom. While we could hit 3.0GHz in the past, it was never stable enough to complete all of our benchmarks. While we only had a few hours left over to test the overclocking stability of the 9850 it does look like it may be the first Phenom capable of easily breaking the 2.6GHz barrier.
We aimed for 3.0GHz and while we could get into Windows and run some benchmarks, we couldn't get it 100% stable. In our opinion it's highly unlikely we'll see AMD release a 3.0GHz Phenom on 65nm this year. It may be possible on 45nm but it's still too early to tell if that'll be this year or not.
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aju - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Ok, the fastest Phenom is still not quite as fast as the Q6600. The problem is that the cost issues is really much larger than it is made to seem in the article. The review does not really figure the total system price into the equation. The exact parts listed in the review for the test AMD system with an Phenom X4 9850 would cost $864.97. The exact parts listed for the Intel system with a Core2Quad Q6600 would cost $1273.96. Were talking about a difference of $405.99 here. For that price difference, you could forgo the 8800GT and put in 4 Radeon HD 3870s in its place and have quad CrossFire for a total of $1314.94. That MSI board supports 4 PCI Express 2.0 slots. Then we would be comparing systems at a similar price point. I wonder if the Intel system could keep up on the games then.coldpower27 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
The situation would not change dramatically if Intel was changed back to DDR2-800. Intel processors don't benefit significantly if at all from the extra memroy bandwidth.This is a performance of the processor without limitation of other components, not a price/performance article.
IvanAndreevich - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Can we have a bench with the Q6600 running the same FSB and clockspeed as the Q9300? Would be an interesting comparison.Schugy - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Seems like q'n'q 2.0 still isn't working as good as the specs on paper tell us.Nihility - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
I'm really disappointed by Intel's 45 nm Q9300.Doesn't overclock as well, less cache and only marginally better performance over the Q6600.
Intel is obviously holding back because AMD can't deliver. I am not amused.
The updated phenoms are nice and all but as an overclocker I'll have to pass on this entire generation from BOTH manufacturers. That and WOW does AMD get owned at the gaming benchmarks.
coldpower27 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
From an overclockers perspective yes, but what's not to like if your buying this product for stock performance, faster then the Q6600 with less cache, and much more efficient energy wise.The only chips that AMD and Intel sell that are geared toward overclocking in mind are AMD's Black Series, and Intel's Extreme Series..
They have no obligation to sell you cheap overclockable processors. If they do it's just very well a bonus.
Nihility - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
From a stock perspective, it's more expensive than a Q9300 but offers marginal performance gains.I don't like marginal processor upgrades. It's a bad sign when a year later you get sold the same speed processors instead of something that is 50% faster. They could obviously be releasing these processors with much higher clock rates but they choose not to so they have that option to crank performance up another useless 5% if they feel like it.
I don't like being toyed with, can you blame me?
nubie - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Hot Damn! Now I am torn between a 45nm Intel and a Tri/Quad AMD.I guess I can afford to sit back and wait, but this is just awesome news, it seems for professional apps the AMD is actually a better value (well duh), I think the Opteron line will be in high demand, and it will probably be very competitive.
Finally, something that is nearly clock-for-clock competitive with Intel. Now if AMD can only get Dual-core models out in 45nm, then they might be able to compete on level ground in the mainstream segment.
I just don't know which to buy, I hope that the promised AM2 compatibility will finally be here, if not there will be a lot of unhappy motherboard owners (my DFI Infinity M2 sorely needs one of these.)
strikeback03 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
umm, they aren't really clock-for-clock competitive, and no one said they were. Depending on pricing they may be price competitive, but the Q9300 seems to hold a decent performance advantage over the 9850 in most tests shown.mczak - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
What was the stepping of the Q6600 core used here? IIRC G0 had significantly lower idle power consumption, and somewhat lower load power consumption than B3.