AMD Phenom Results
11.25.07 - 04:14pm
AMD’s Phenom has been out in the wild for a few days but unless you were scouring the net for results then this launch could have slipped on by. For the most part the performance has been lackluster from AMD while Intel has been pushing their products with samples of the new QX9770 hitting the press to coincide with the Phenom launch. Right now the 2.2GHz 9500 Phenom is launching for $251 while the 2.3GHz 9600 Phenom will pull $283 from your pocket. With these prices AMD is essentially stacking themselves up against the 2.4GHz Q6600 from Intel which retails for $266. The few results that I have seen, Anandtech’s Review and a few XtremeSystems threads, have all shown that Phenom holds it’s own to an extent at stock speeds but the moment the chip is overclocked it flops on it’s face when compared to the Q6600. From the sounds of things there are a few issues when overclocking the chips with either boards not fully supporting the chips, the chips not scaling well with voltage, and the inability to hit anything above 3GHz. While 3GHz would be a 700MHz overclock for the 9500, a 30% overclock, it’s nothing compared to the typical 3600MHz clockspeeds and 50% overclocks that the Q6600 with the G0 stepping has been hitting lately.
I’d highly suggest heading over to Anandtech to check out the entire spread on the Phenom launch but for the quick lowdown continue reading. At stock the Phenom gets beat up and down the block in the synthetic, encoding, and gaming tests when compared to Intels Q9450 Yorkfield and Q6600 Kentsfield. Power consumption at idle is comparable to the Q6600 but under load the Q6600 consistently offers greater performance while pulling less power from the wall. I suppose with further revisions to the silicon we will see voltage drop and consumption drop but for the time being the Q6600 is still the victor in both raw performance and performance/power. If you are looking to build a new PC from scratch then I can only suggest going with a P35 motherboard and an Intel Core 2 processor, however if you have an AM2 motherboard then upgrading from your Athlon to a Phenom might be a viable option as it’ll save you a few hundred dollars for a new board. I’d only suggest purchasing a Phenom if AMD slashes the prices or you have a Phenom X4 compatible AM2 board, otherwise go with Intel as even the budget E21xx series chips crush Phenom when overclocked in single-threaded applications.
After being with AMD for so many years, my next PC is now almost guarunteed to be with Intel, which is a shame. Clock for clock, the Phenom X2 is not much better than an Athlon64 X2, so it makes me wonder why it took them so long to bring out something so limp.
I sure hope the future revisions and the evolution of their new Phenom range yields some big performance increases, because without that, they’re in a bit of trouble.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that with the new year AMD will launch some high-clocking Phenoms, a 3GHz chip would help considerably. Honestly I’m as confused as you are in regards to why it took so long to launch this chip, it is a rather large chip being a single die and all but the performance is lacking for the time invested. For AMD to hold any light to Intel’s 45nm processors, Phenom will need to hit middle to upper 3.xGHz overclocks considering how Yorkfield has already been shown to hit 4.5+GHz on air. It doesn’t look good, that is for sure.
With the manufacturing process limiting the clocks so badly, I don’t even know where they plan to go. They can’t clock them too much higher that’s for sure, unless they want to run them nice and Prescotty-Hot. In which case AMD and Intel’s roles in the enthusiast arena have truly reversed.