Phenom - looking good?!

[emoners]

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sakto jud bro, dats why gi pugngan nako ako kaugalingon mag upgrade og processor and motherboard for at least 3 years. ky maka hurot ug kwarta. hehehe....

hahaha lol

grabe how tech moves FASTER lately...P4/Sempron used to last longer

[fish]

bitaw... dugay kaayo ang development sa una... karon kay murag na-threatened man gud ang intel sa AMD, mao na ilang gipaspasan ug pagawas ang mga processors..

[emoners]

Kani ha... NO AMD/INTEL Fanboyism ha...

First Tests: AMD's New Phenom CPU Won't Scare Intel
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...d/article.html

Our look at AMD's Spider desktop platform reveals impressive technology but disappointing results. Can AMD compete if its high-end chip is slower than a $230 Intel CPU?

Jon Jacobi, PC World
Sunday, November 18, 2007 9:00 PM PST

After months of anticipation, AMD is launching its Phenom desktop processor and "Spider" platform for desktop PCs. Its new Phenom chips feature a native quad-core design, a 65-nanometer manfufacturing process, and enhanced power management technology.

But will Phenom and the new motherboards, chip sets, and graphics boards that make up the rest of the Spider platform be enough to put a dent in Intel's recent dominance? We ran a Spider-based system through our PC WorldBench 6 beta 2 benchmark at an AMD event in Lake Tahoe, and came away convinced that AMD still has a lot of work to do.

Tough Times

All things considered, 2007 probably hasn't been AMD's favorite year. In fact, things haven't been exactly sunshine and roses for the company since the middle of 2006 when Intel introduced its Core 2 Duo CPUs. After a good three years as the performance champ, AMD was suddenly getting its clock cleaned by its rival--literally; when running at the same clock speed Core 2 Duo chips were anywhere from 10 to nearly 20 percent faster than comparable Athlon 64 X2s.

Not only that, but AMD's $5.4 billion dollar acquisition of GPU and chip set vendor ATI was followed almost immediately by its new purchase sliding well back in its performance race with nVidia. The purchase gave AMD expertise in GPUs and chip sets plus independence from nVidia--a longtime ally who had started supporting Intel the year before--but it added to the perception of the company as firmly in second place. Losing money for several quarters straight hasn't helped, either.

2007 also saw AMD fall increasingly behind in the race for better process technology. Intel's new Penryn chips are manufactured using a 45-nanometer process, which allows the company to pack in more transistors per square millimeter than the 65nm process AMD is introducing with its Phenom chips. That can translate to more chips per slab of silicon for cheaper production, giving Intel yet another advantage. AMD's latest 65nm Opterons with their parsimonious power usage are competing well in the server market, but that does nothing for the mainstream.

Which brings us to the rollout of Phenom, a quad-core desktop CPU that AMD's own benchmarks place at 32 percent faster than a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 running at the same clock speed. The company hopes Phenom will keep it within shouting distance, performance-wise, of Intel's desktop products.

Whither the Chips?

Unfortunately, there were few (as in no) Phenom parts to be had for independent testing or purchase by the time of this writing. When asked about this, AMD's Simon Solotko said plenty of the 2.2-GHz Phenom 9500 and 2.3-GHz Phenom 9600 parts would be in the channel by the Monday launch. He also said the scarcity of review units was due to the complexity of a rollout that also involves the new 790FX Spider chip set and ATI 3800 series graphics cards, not because of any problem fabricating the new chips.

According to AMD, the 2.2-GHz Phenom 9500 will sell for $251 (in quantities of 1000) and the 2.3-GHz Phenom 9600 will go for $283. An unlocked, overclockable Black Edition 2.3-GHz Phenom will also be available later this year. The 2.6-GHz Phenom 9900 that AMD made available at its benchmarking event won't be available until the first quarter of 2008, and should cost below $350 when it's released. A sub-$300 2.4-Ghz 9700 parts is scheduled to ship in the same timeframe.

The Phenom-based sysftem we tested featured two of ATI's recently-released Radeon HD 3850 graphics cards, an MSI motherboard using AMD's 790FX chip set, and 2GB of DDR2-1066 RAM.

Discouraging results

AMD's test system scored a 105 on PC WorldBench 6 beta 2, which is significantly faster than the 93 posted by a Polywell 580CF-2900 with its 3-GHz Athlon 64 X2 6000+, though not nearly the 32 percent gain touted by AMD. That's an impressive boost over AMD's previous CPUs, but it's nowhere near enough to make Intel sweat.

Until we can get a Phenom CPU in our labs, we can't make apples-to-apples comparisons, but the test system's 105 score isn't much faster than the score of 96 turned in by the average system we've seen based around an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU. That's an older chip that goes for $230 from stores like NewEgg. The 2.2- and 2.3-GHz Phenom chips being released cost more than that, and they're at least 300MHz slower than the 2.6-GHz chip AMD allowed us to test.

Still, we're going to have to wait until we can better match an AMD system to an Intel system to give you a definitive comparison of the two company's flagship CPUs. Stay tuned for that.

AMD currently has no answer for Intel's upcoming SSE4 instructions, which may widen the performance gap further in selected applications. On the other hand, unlike Intel's quad-core parts, which are basically two dual-core CPUs using a shared bus interface, Phenom has four distinct cores, which should also offer benefits. Again, however, we'll have to wait until benchmarks are optimized for four or more cores as well as SSE4 before the declaring the final word on those issues.

Platform News

With no way to regain the CPU performance crown, AMD has been trying to focus the media's attention on its peripheral technologies. This isn't all misdirection, since performance in games often relies more heavily on a system's GPU than its CPU.

The new Spider 790FX chip set plays right into that with support for AMD's HyperTransport 3.0 IO bus, which has 20 percent more bandwidth than its predecessor. The 790FX also can combine not two but four ATI 3800 PCIe 2.0 graphics cards on a single motherboard--a technology AMD refers to as CrossFireX. Preliminary tests we've perused online indicate that the performance of these 3800 series graphics cards matches up well with all but nVidia's fastest, and that they have very good power consumption numbers.

According to AMD, motherboards based on its 790FX chip set should be inexpensive when compared with the latest motherboards built for Intel's Penryn CPUs. Spider-based systems could consequently offer an interesting choice for mainstream gamers--don't spend much on your CPU, motherboard, and memory, but combine it with up to four fast but reasonably priced 3800-series graphics boards. The CPU won't be able to compete with similarly priced Intel offerings--especially with mainstream Penryn chips expected to launch early next year--but a quad-Crossifre system could be an affordable gaming powerhouse.

We'll look at whether such a system ends up being a good value as soon as we can get commercially available Phenom and Spider hardware into our labs.


Forum: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=167453

Im shocked at the latest reviews. AMD have really blown it this time, they just can no longer come close to competing with intel. With the release of the Phenom(inal failure) cpu, AMD have cemented their position as the most pathetic cpu manufacturer known to man. Their flagship cpu is slower than intels slowest cpu, now that is absolutely miserable performance and is frankly inexcusable in todays market. When reading the reviews and performance comparisons, im struck by how bad the performance of phenom really is. Is anyone actually going to buy one of these cpu's? Spend actual hard earned money on one? and if so, will they dare tell anyone? With performance so dismal, and chipsets lacking DDR 1066 support (i mean able to actually run it not just saying it can) i cannot see a future for AMD in todays marketplace. Even Dell is giving them the flick as it would be nothing short of embarrassing to have their company's name dragged down by the endorsement of phenom. Wow AMD, you have just hammered the last nail into your coffin.

According to McConnell, Dell (DELL) plans to “de-emphasize” the use of AMD processors in 2008, “due to the disappointing performance of Barcelona and Phenom, poor availability and AMD’s decision to deliver initial shipments of its new Phenom product line to the channel first rather than to OEMs.”


Review: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3153

[emoners]

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screen...enomX2_800.PNG

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screen...6291295659.PNG

[fish]

how bout this... AMD Triple core... to be release feb. 2008... anyone interested in this processor?

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20071129PD205.html

[emoners]

how bout this... AMD Triple core... to be release feb. 2008... anyone interested in this processor?

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20071129PD205.html

it would be interesting how that would perform. but considering AMD's Quad was a disappointment (to me, as far as i know), i'm not betting on the triple core...for now.

[akera]

Triple core is basically a 65nm quad-core Agena based with one core disabled...

[trickx]

what was the phenom errata about?

[fish]

it would be interesting how that would perform. but considering AMD's Quad was a disappointment (to me, as far as i know), i'm not betting on the triple core...for now.

well for me, i'm not expecting too much na sa AMD.... the prices should not be disappointing... hehehe

[carmicael]

AMD puts their "system" at a good range, considering the whole set would cost less than an intel system.
But, owning an AMD system would mean owning "second-best".

This wouldn't matter to most mainstream users though, and AMD is wise at targeting the masses, para mas daghan ug profit. Sa mga nabasahan nako, dissapointed ang mga "enthusiast" sa AMD Phenom(enal Disaster)...kuno