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AMD Phenom 9600 and ECS GeForce 6100PM-M2 Combo $169.99

R

Rockhound1

Senior member
Seems like a good deal. I know the motherboard is marginal at best, but it could work for you temporarily until you can get a better one. The whole combo deal is cheaper than you could buy the processor alone.

I wonder if this is the new B3 Stepping Phenom?

Sale runs Monday and Tuesday (3/24 - 3/25).
 
Not the B3 stepping; they're trying to clear out their old inventory (I reckon they've finally realized no one wants them). A really good price for a Phenom 9600 and AM2+ mobo with integrated graphics however. 9600s alone are going for $220 at Newegg. Do you have a link to the coupon/ad by chance?

I think the cheapest Intel base that would be comparable would be an E4500 with a low-end P35. At stock, I think performance would be about the same as the Phenom system. Overclocked e4500 would destroy it.
 
I don't think destroy would be the operative word here. It would seriously depend upon your particular workload, as the Phenoms operate within 10% or so of the Q6600s (in true multi-threaded apps). I'm considering picking this up as it'll give me a 4GB 4-core system for just over $200 for encoding DV. If you have a better solution, I'd love to hear it.
 
I am thinking about going by Fry's and checking this out. If it is a B3 stepping, I will buy it. But I think Harmattan is probably correct in that Fry's is likely clearing their old inventory out.
 
Originally posted by: Rockhound1
I am thinking about going by Fry's and checking this out. If it is a B3 stepping, I will buy it. But I think Harmattan is probably correct in that Fry's is likely clearing their old inventory out.
Click to expand...

aren't the b3 stepping ones going to have a 50 at the end. like 9650?
 
Originally posted by: hans007
Originally posted by: Rockhound1
I am thinking about going by Fry's and checking this out. If it is a B3 stepping, I will buy it. But I think Harmattan is probably correct in that Fry's is likely clearing their old inventory out.
Click to expand...

aren't the b3 stepping ones going to have a 50 at the end. like 9650?
Click to expand...

Yes.

AMD is supposed to be cutting prices in April along with introducing B3 Phenoms, so it may be best to wait.

Although this is a very good deal for a quad core + motherboard. As long as you disable the TLB fix, you can't beat the price-performance Phenom provides at a price like this.
 
Originally posted by: Extelleron
Originally posted by: hans007
Originally posted by: Rockhound1
I am thinking about going by Fry's and checking this out. If it is a B3 stepping, I will buy it. But I think Harmattan is probably correct in that Fry's is likely clearing their old inventory out.
Click to expand...

aren't the b3 stepping ones going to have a 50 at the end. like 9650?
Click to expand...

Yes.

AMD is supposed to be cutting prices in April along with introducing B3 Phenoms, so it may be best to wait.

Although this is a very good deal for a quad core + motherboard. As long as you disable the TLB fix, you can't beat the price-performance Phenom provides at a price like this.
Click to expand...

I didn't know the B3 stepping would be reflected in the Phenom naming scheme. I guess I will wait. I am not in any rush anyway - just thought this was a deal worth considering.
 
It's tempting, but I'm the type of person who couldn't live with this proc knowing it "could" produce errors, even if the chances were remote. Irrational I know, but thems are just the facts😉
 
Originally posted by: Stas
Didn't AMD say that they will exchange B2 CPUs with B3, if the customer requests?
Click to expand...

That's for server customers who were probably pissed when they bought Opterons and found out they were affected by the TLB erratum.

For retail Phenoms, the solution is to enable the TLB patch. It's not an option for me or any enthusiast, but AMD doesn't really need to replace the CPU - you bought it knowing about erratum 298.

Luckily, the error only affects virtualization programs and won't occur in commonly used desktop programs.

 
Does it affect virtual machines like those in vmware, or virtual machines like those in Xen? Or both?
 
Originally posted by: Extelleron
Originally posted by: Stas
Didn't AMD say that they will exchange B2 CPUs with B3, if the customer requests?
Click to expand...

For retail Phenoms, the solution is to enable the TLB patch. It's not an option for me or any enthusiast, but AMD doesn't really need to replace the CPU - you bought it knowing about erratum 298.
Click to expand...

That's not a fair statement at all. Plenty of people don't read enthusiast forums and may have picked up an OEM box with a Phenom in it. There is no bright orange warning saying "WARNING! BUGGY AND SUITABLE ONLY FOR LIGHT DESKTOP APPLICATION USE" on the boxes at Office Max, for instance.

A quad core is a power user's PC. Someone buying one of these beasts isn't just going to run a web browser and office, the odds of a vm or two finding a home on that machine are non-zero.

That said, I've never heard of AMD offering to replace the CPUs with fixed steppings. And this is definitely a hot deal if you want to get a Phenom to play with.
 
I think this is a good deal considering the price for mb along is about 70. So the cpu is only 100 bucks for a quad!? however, they are probably B2s.
 
Waiting patiently here for the B3 stepping Quad's to pop in my system. Not a bad deal for the combo, but i'd rather wait for B3 myself. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: MysticMan1
Phenom 9600, Q9300, Q6600 and E8500 benchmark comparisons LINK

AMD Phenom 9600 processor was tested with disabled TLB-patch.
Click to expand...

It would have been useful to test WITHOUT the TLB-patch on the same chart. :roll:

The "bug" is a rare occurance and won't pop up for most home users. As has been pointed out, Intel has a couple hundred erratas in the Core 2 architecture, but no one ever talks about those...and this one would seem to have been pretty serious.



 
Looks like I got hosed? I just bought this 9600/ECS deal at the egg, more like $270. Ouch. Wonder if I could return it. One thing for sure, this things rox right along. I've got 2GB of the Ballistix 1066 mem, I usually just let any new Pr0c/mobo sit running F@H at 100% for a week or two. It's kicking out a WU every day using the Wintel SMP client, which pulls down SMP optimized WU's. Like 1750 PPD all by itself.
 
Fry's is evil. I was so happy when they came, but now it just causes me pain to see their ads!

Tempting to pick this up, also to get the Antec Solo case for $40 AR and Antec Basiq 500w PS for $10 AR, 500g HD for $70 and I know they have some ram available too.

-johnniewalker
 
I picked one up, but am seriously wondering about returning it. It's definitely not a B3...

And my main intended use is video encoding, one of the few processes I hear will definitely be hit by the TLB bug and patch. Maybe I'll do a quick check, but I'm short on time for the next week, and there's only a 15 day return policy on these.
 
Originally posted by: Lurker1
I picked one up, but am seriously wondering about returning it. It's definitely not a B3...

And my main intended use is video encoding, one of the few processes I hear will definitely be hit by the TLB bug and patch. Maybe I'll do a quick check, but I'm short on time for the next week, and there's only a 15 day return policy on these.
Click to expand...
Where did you hear that video encoding would hit the bug? As I understand it, Virtualization is about the only task that will hit the bug, should be fine for video work.
 
The ones that worry me most are the winrar test drop of 73%, and the video encoding/decoding/comporession performance.

Neither of those bode well with the TLB "fix", for those of us that would actually like to use 4 cores for single applications.

I'm still torn though, for a little more than $200, I'd have a 4GB quad core setup ready to drop in a waiting case w/ drive.

I couldn't come close to that with an Intel CPU in that performance range, since the CPU's alone cost almost that much.

Without the TLB fix, I'm not sure what the results of encoding video will be, as the TLB bug could very well affect multi-threaded video processing and encoding.
 
I feel better about the deal now. I got the ECS 780G mobo, has ATI 3200 onboard and uses the 1066/PC8500 memory. A much better board than the one in this bundle. Whew, I hate getting hosed.
 
Originally posted by: Lurker1
The ones that worry me most are the winrar test drop of 73%, and the video encoding/decoding/comporession performance.

Neither of those bode well with the TLB "fix", for those of us that would actually like to use 4 cores for single applications.

I'm still torn though, for a little more than $200, I'd have a 4GB quad core setup ready to drop in a waiting case w/ drive.

I couldn't come close to that with an Intel CPU in that performance range, since the CPU's alone cost almost that much.

Without the TLB fix, I'm not sure what the results of encoding video will be, as the TLB bug could very well affect multi-threaded video processing and encoding.
Click to expand...

I don't think any one besides AMD have been able to reproduce the TLB bug, I would just disable the TLB fix and take my chances. If you're using Linux, there is a kernel patch for the TLB bug which I hear only reduces overall performance by 1%.
 
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