AT's Phenom review up (11/19)

[DrMrLordX]

This review looks bad, but let's be honest here: AMD has shipped a quad-core part and it works at stock speeds. It has bugs which seem to prevent some, if not all the B2 chips from overclocking well. Anyone looking for a drop-in quad replacement for a slow-ish X2 will probably like this thing. Anyone looking for a chip to run in a platform hosting 2-4 Radeon 3870 cards will like this thing.

Anyone looking to overclock will fear and/or hate it.

Seriously, I was thinking about getting one, lapping it, putting on some good ol X23, and seeing how far I could take the chip. Now I'm not so sure about that. Viditor said he was waiting on B3 chips and I can see why . . . these chips look risky for the enthusiast. Even if there are some X4-9500s and 9600s out there that will not display problems at speeds of 2.4 ghz or higher, they may still experience difficulties at higher clock speeds (as did Anand's review sample) and they may be virtually indistinguishable from dud OC chips. Power consumption on these chips isn't great either, and unless it improves on future steppings I see this as being a sticking point for some folks even after the B3 stepping chips become available.

AMD has not explicitly sold these chips as anything other than 2.2 and 2.3 ghz parts. Sadly they touted their overclocking tool during a release of chips that are not, in and of themselves, reliable overclockers.

Show me the B3 chips that can launch at stock speeds of 3 ghz. This launch is mostly a dud. Anyone who does get a good B2 chip that can run stable at 3 ghz will be lucky, I suspect.

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Still doesn't excuse the journalism does it?

His journalism requires no excuses. He told the truth about the ordeal he went through just to get a review sample that could be put through its usual paces. Compare his article to the mess on Tom's Hardware. Tom's didn't (and wasn't allowed to) run anything other than 3dMark06 after overclocking which prevented them from encountering the difficulties Anand had with the chip past 2.6 ghz. They even reviewed the X4-9700 which has since been recalled! They were also forced to label their power consumption test with the warning "Power Dissipation - No Reliable Data". The fact that the chip in their test chewed up more power at load than the QX9650 was still ugly.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Still doesn't excuse the journalism does it?

I'm sorry if I don't see a problem with Anandtech's review. They got the point across, the benchmarks were conclusive and their analysis was concise.

Anand had a rant about AMD trying to coerce him into going to Tahoe for some canned benchmark madness, and I don't blame him. Release day reviews don't work like that, never have, never will.

 

[amenx]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Still doesn't excuse the journalism does it?

Theres many reviews out. Take your pick.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Disappointing. It would have been nice to see the Phenom do better and make things competitive performance and price wise.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: brandonb
Here is another review from a flightsim/simulation perspective.

http://www.simhq.com/_technology2/technology_120a.html

That's not a Phenom review.

 

[gOJDO]

Originally posted by: harpoon84As much fun as it is sticking it up to fanboys, today is truly a sad day for the industry.

Its being sad for months, just most of the people were unable to understand(some of them were denying the facts and the data even when Barcelona benches appeared) that K10 has no theoretical chance to outperform Core2.

We are going to pay for AMD's failure more then them. Forget about cheap enthusiast Yorkfields and cheap Nehaleem CPUs.

What is more disappointing is that AMD can't stop the BS. We've heard 10000 stories about the magic stepping that will make K10 to fly. First it was B1A, then it was B2, now it was B3, in Q1 it's going to be B4 and so on.

I wish somebody with a lot of cash buys AMD. Or perhaps, NVIDIA enters the x86 market and break the monopoly that Intel is going to have in the following few years.

 

[Genx87]

A decade ago if you asked me whether an Intel chip would be in my rig, you would get a laugh. Today, 12 months after building my first Intel rig around a Core 2 Duo 6600. I dont expect to see an AMD chip in my next rig that will be built in ~ November of 08.

Sad days in the CPU world.

 

[Om51]

Excellent quality review
Great article Anand and and I really enjoyed reading it .
Thats a sad day for AMD Fanboys and " competition" .

 

[Nemesis 1]

Agreed . Very nice review.

Now to buy some ATI video cards if I can find them . Selling like hot cakes.

 

[erwos]

I'm sad about the lack of cheap quad-cores. If they had a 1.6ghz quad for $150, that would be one heck of a CPU for some applications. I suppose the margins weren't there for it, but... dammit. It's clear that competing with Intel on the high end was a bit of a debacle.

I'd like to see some mea culpas, though, from the fanboys who were telling us "for sure" AMD was going to rock Intel's socks.

 

[coldpower27]

Ah well, it's too bad but this just confirms the Barcelona on desktop previews from before, at least they aren't too expensive so existing AM2 can get Quad Core.

 

[Hulk]

A prediction poll from February.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...ab=arc&highlight_key=y

Read 'em and weep.

 

[teclis1023]

I will happily move back to AMD when they become contenders again.

...if they do

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Although not the results everyone was hoping for, it's quite inline with all the previews. As Anand states it may allow Intel to drive the prices up on high end quads, but it does provide potential competition on the lowend and AMD will be forced to reduce prices to be competitive.

This new archeticture obviously has serious scaling problems but it is after all the first true single die native quad and the ability to control clocks individually is very promising in many ways. If you can look past the performance shortfall the technology is actually quite exciting.

I think in the long run this is a good thing for AMD, they could have easily tweaked the K8 and slapped two of them together and had a much more competitive product to C2D quads at a much earlier date but they remained commited to innovation instead of short term competition. This decision has cost them dearly in short term financial performance but I think it was the right decision.

I also think we will see some nice performance gains as chipsets/bios/drivers mature for this platform

Things that excite me about Phenom:
Power management possiblities (Think core scaled CnQ, individual cores clocking up according to load)
Fast track to octacore (two four core dies under the hood) AMD has lost the clockspeed battle but they are in position to take the core quantity lead

 

[Hulk]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy

I think in the long run this is a good thing for AMD, they could have easily tweaked the K8 and slapped two of them together and had a much more competitive product to C2D quads at a much earlier date but they remained commited to innovation instead of short term competition.

I agree with much of what you said except for the above statement. Although the K8 was a great chip in it's day it is common knowledge that Core 2 Duo is a superior part. Putting two K8's on one substrate would have really made AMD look bad. Every time you add a core the total performance delta increases. The percentage stays the same of course but the actual work accomplished decreases. So if AMD dual is doing 10fps video encoding with dual and Intel is doing 15fps, then in quad amd is doing 20fps and Intel is doing 30fps. When you see the graph in fps things would look even more grim for AMD.

 

[Dacalo]

Inevitably some of these Phenoms will sell, even though Intel is currently faster and offers better overall price-performance (does anyone else feel weird reading that?).

Indeed Anand, how ironic. Well, an Intel chip will be in my next computer for sure, as I will be kicking my 4400+ X2 to the curb soon.

 

[Falloutboy]

I find it amazing though after all this time that there chips based on a smaller process can't get any faster speeds than there current chips they have had out for several years. hell 2 years ago you could get a dual core opty that would go to 2.8-3ghz pretty reliably. I find that pretty bad on AMDs part.

if amd was able to kick out a 3ghz part today then they would be back in the game. intel if they wanted to could proubly kick out a 3.6ghz part but they are holding back

 

[nyker96]

I thought C2D is about 20% faster than X2s, how can it C2Q be still 20% faster than an improved next gen X4? This just don't make much sense to me. It's like they've done little to improve their stuff in the last year or so.

 

[KingstonU]

I wish Anandtech's review included some Athlon 64 scores in their charts. Though I guess since there are only QuadCore Phenoms and only DualCore Athlons they didn't see it fit, but it would still be nice.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: KingstonU
I wish Anandtech's review included some Athlon 64 scores in their charts. Though I guess since there are only QuadCore Penoms and only DualCore Athlons they didn't see it fit, but it would still be nice.

I think Hexus did include the X2 6400+ in their reviews:

Here
and
Here

 

[nubian1]

I actually appreciate Anand's honesty in the review including the rant. It had been revealed throughout the web that AMD was trying to "control" reviewers exposure to the Phenom and some spoke out about it. I applaud Anand for telling it like it is even in retrospect if this could have been left for a separate article.

With respect to AMD's latest effort, being an early adopter of the Athlon & Arthlon64 I am disappointed not only in the current lineup but in their future additions to this lineup. I really wanted AMD to make me almost regret my C2D purchase but this isn't obviously going to happen. If you are a presently a socket AM2 owner you may have reason to rejoice but I really don't see many "New" AM2 recruits being swayed by the Phenom and it's clock speed/performance & AM2/AM2+ confusion, unless AMD gets real aggressive with the pricing.

What AMD needs to do to get back on track is to burn the midnight oil to give the consumer a true next generation part with competitive performance. They have so many issues & Pains to deal with right now, many unfortunately self inflicted. I still have hope.

 

[BSMonitor]

today is truly a sad day for the industry

Let's not get carried away now.

Point is AMD exists, the $200-$300 price point will always be there.

No one was Paying $1000's of dollars for Pentium's and Pentium 2's. Most of the cost of a PC back then were the other components. $200 CD-ROM drives and $200 4GB hard drives. $150 modems.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: nyker96
I thought C2D is about 20% faster than X2s, how can it C2Q be still 20% faster than an improved next gen X4? This just don't make much sense to me. It's like they've done little to improve their stuff in the last year or so.

Well, C2D is closer to 25 - 30% faster than X2 clock for clock, and C2Q is 'only' 10 - 15% faster clock for clock than Phenom, so actually AMD has done a lot to improve Phenom, it just hasn't done enough.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Yeah-- it`s interesting how those who are die hard AMD users are not commenting!!
I personally was holding back upgrading for the 2nd time this year waiting and hoping that AMD would step up to the plate........3 strikes your out!!

 

[RussianSensation]

Looks like OC Q6600 will last a long time now.