Phenom 9500 vs Q6600

[alizee]

I'm currently in the market for quad-core and will be purchasing a new CPU and motherboard. I'll be keeping all my current gear, and I'll be purchasing a Crossfire motherboard for my Radeon HD 3850.

What I'll be doing with the system is twofold. Primary purpose is gaming, and the secondary will be encoding all my film-school projects that I will be editing on my Mac (specifically the reason I want 4 cores).

The quandry all comes down to Price. The Phenom 9500 is ~$200 and the decent MSI K9A2 CF is ~$100. So, I would have a quad-core crossfire ready system for ~$300, just about $30 more than a Q6600, not even taking into account the cost of a crossfire capable motherboard.

My only concern, though, is this going to be holding me back in gaming? I run at 1680x1050, with as much AA as I can get away with. Is this a high enough resolution that I shouldn't see much difference because these two CPUs are fast enough? What about when/if I add a second 3850? I've been hard pressed to find a review that covers these concerns, they're generally running at 1024x728 to minimize the impact of the GPU, and this really shows how much better the Q6600 is.

Thanks for the input.

 

[v8envy]

Do you want to gamble? A Q6600 is $279 at the egg, with a nearly certain SLACR stepping. The DS3L gigabyte board, P35-E abit and other decent low end overclocker boards dip down to below $100 quite often. In fact, an MSI board is in the hot deals forum for $94 right this minute.

The Q6600 will hit 3ghz (or better) on stock cooling without breaking a sweat. The AMD probably will not. The AMD cpu, boards & BIOSes still seem to be of beta quality with conflicting reports of instability. Plus the BIOS erratum fix may or may not impact real world performance for your app.

Is all that worth $90?

Too bad about the lack of 45nm quad cores later that month. You wouldn't have had to ask that question at all.

 

[error8]

The Phenom doesn't worth the money in any way you look at it. It comes "broken" and it has a quite high price for the performance that it offers. Just buy the Q6600 which is very OC friendly and it has a good price. The only place where AMD still matters is dual core market.

 

[sutahz]

Alizee never said if he was overclocking, so the Phenom 9500 v Q6600 both at stock are just about the same value (w/ Q6600 beating 9500 by a hair).
http://www23.tomshardware.com/...6&model2=871&chart=444

 

[taltamir]

Unless you are doing video encoding you are gonna get much more for your money by buying a higher clockrate core2 duo than a quad core...

If you are building a video encoding machine, then you should know that the phenom is cheaper to buy... but gives lower performance per dollar, performance per watt, overclockability, and pretty much any other conceiveable measurement. The only benefit of the phenom is that the absolute cheapest phenom is cheaper then the absolute cheapest C2Q. But you are better off buying a faster X2 or C2D then buying a 2ghz phenom

 

[v8envy]

Why would you NOT overclock a Q6600 if you're buying a quality OC friendly motherboard?

In that case, no need to get an OC-friendly motherboard. There are much cheaper Intel motherboards available in the $50-60 range -- not so with the AM2+ socket. If the $255 price for a Q6600 someone mentioned in another thread is real then a stock config build is a sub-$20 difference. That's so much of a no brainer it hurts.

Also, as you mentioned the chart you linked already factors in 'price.' Not sure what apps were tested, how, or whether the BIOS errata fix was applied. And how much each platform was priced at when tested. It had to have been a pretty big performance delta for the Q6600 to come out a better 'value.'

 

[tallman45]

Don't forget that any Quad will require you to manually balance applications between processors since cache between all 4 is not shared and data become out dated with 2 separate cache's

Honestly, it is highly unlikely a Dual Core would be the cause of a bottleneck, spend the additional funds in additional HDD's and balanace your data acrosee multiple drives/channels

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: alizee
I'm currently in the market for quad-core and will be purchasing a new CPU and motherboard. I'll be keeping all my current gear, and I'll be purchasing a Crossfire motherboard for my Radeon HD 3850.

What I'll be doing with the system is twofold. Primary purpose is gaming, and the secondary will be encoding all my film-school projects that I will be editing on my Mac (specifically the reason I want 4 cores).

The quandry all comes down to Price. The Phenom 9500 is ~$200 and the decent MSI K9A2 CF is ~$100. So, I would have a quad-core crossfire ready system for ~$300, just about $30 more than a Q6600, not even taking into account the cost of a crossfire capable motherboard.

My only concern, though, is this going to be holding me back in gaming? I run at 1680x1050, with as much AA as I can get away with. Is this a high enough resolution that I shouldn't see much difference because these two CPUs are fast enough? What about when/if I add a second 3850? I've been hard pressed to find a review that covers these concerns, they're generally running at 1024x728 to minimize the impact of the GPU, and this really shows how much better the Q6600 is.

Thanks for the input.

Your vid card will most likely hold you back before the cpu. The new 'X2' GPU generations should be rolling out this quarter - maybe this month ???

As far as encoding your software must be capable of running 4 parallel threads to gain any benefit from the 9500 or 6600. Here is a not-so-up-to-date list of multi-threaded applications or review the link above to Tom's CPU Charts to see if there is any software you may use.

As also noted above if your software is not capable of running 4 parallel threads a higher clockspeed dual-core cpu would be the way to go ...

 

[v8envy]

The way to go right now - possibly. UT3 is showing us the future. Once developers can reasonably expect people to have the CPU oomph to power additional physics and AI, those physics and AI will make their way into games. And it's a sure bet they won't be single threaded.

While you can't future proof the $ difference between a dual and a quad is small enough that it's worth the gamble.

Worst case he can run multiple copies of his app. Yeah, cache redundancy is a good point. Still, the memory bandwidth isn't the main problem with video encoding apps. 2 megs of cache per CPU should be enough to chug right along. 4 instances running at 80% of 2 will still finish much faster. Or, he could do something else with a core or two while encoding.

We haven't even began to tap the multi-core processors on the desktop. I already have a dozen possible uses for my future quad including multiple VMs running stuff I have old, power hungry boxes doing at the moment.

 

[alizee]

Thanks for the replys.

I will not be buying a dual-core because the apps I will be running do take advantage of 4 cores (sorenson squeeze, maya, others).

Originally posted by: v8envy
Do you want to gamble? A Q6600 is $279 at the egg, with a nearly certain SLACR stepping. The DS3L gigabyte board, P35-E abit and other decent low end overclocker boards dip down to below $100 quite often. In fact, an MSI board is in the hot deals forum for $94 right this minute.

Are these boards crossfire compatible? I realize that some P35 boards are, but that the PCI-E x16 slots are x16 and x4 electrically. Would missing the 4 or 12 lanes in the second slot mean much?

Is all that worth $90?

I would say that in this circumstance, that yes. For 3/4s the price getting 3/4s or better performance is worth it, if in fact I'm getting 3/4s the performance. I doubt the bug will effect me, so I'll turn the fix off and I won't need to worry about the performance delta. And, as I'm sure is true for many people, though not all, money is an issue. Saving $100 means a lot, and it also means I'm halfway to another 3850.

 

[sutahz]

P35 does do 8x/4x for crossfire, X38 does 8x/8x, but its pci-e 2.0 so its like 16x/16x pci-e 1.0. I wish I had gotten a X38 board, but as I doubt I'll ever run 2 gfx cards together, it really doesnt matter.
You mention money is in fact a big factor, the cheapest X38 is like $220, P35's can be got for $100.
Who cares if the Phenom has errata. CPU manufactures do the right thing by releasing cpu's w/ no known errata but the fact is the errata hasnt been observed outside of AMDs lab. If I had a phenom, I'd rather run it w/ the chance of the errata happening then to have the BIOS 'fixed' to prevent it from happening for that 20% more in performance.
Ok, PCI-E 1.1 not 1.0, 2.0 is still 2x 1.1/1.0 so same difference for my point. Good looking out though.

 

[alizee]

Originally posted by: sutahz
P35 does do 8x/4x for crossfire, X38 does 8x/8x, but its pci-e 2.0 so its like 16x/16x pci-e 1.0. I wish I had gotten a X38 board, but as I doubt I'll ever run 2 gfx cards together, it really doesnt matter.
You mention money is in fact a big factor, the cheapest X38 is like $220, P35's can be got for $100.
Who cares if the Phenom has errata. CPU manufactures do the right thing by releasing cpu's w/ no known errata but the fact is the errata hasnt been observed outside of AMDs lab. If I had a phenom, I'd rather run it w/ the chance of the errata happening then to have the BIOS 'fixed' to prevent it from happening for that 20% more in performance.

P35 is PCI-E 1.1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_P35

But your feeliing about the errata, I wholeheartedly agree. From everything I've read, it will probably not effect most end-users.

 

[v8envy]

Then it sounds like the Phenom may be right for you. I'm going to pull the trigger on a Q6600 in the next month or so, unless a killer deal happens earlier. I'm willing to spend the extra few tens of $ for peace of mind and 50%+ greater low effort overclocked performance. I intend to legacy game as well as crunch numbers & run VMs. ATM it takes about a 2.8 ghz core2 cpu to not bottleneck current generation video hardware in most current games. That will only get worse in the spring. Even if the two were equivalent clock for clock, 2.2 ghz is not going to cut it.

Oh, and that $100 AM2+ board wasn't crossfire, was it? I looked at it briefly, and only saw one PCIe x16 slot, even though it was a 790 chipset. If we're talking crossfire I think the cheapest crossfire capable 'Pro' boards for AM2+ are in the $200 range.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't want to get into a p---ing contest about AMD v INtel.

Today's status-quo can change -- eventually.

But -- two things: whether or not you plan on using dual-graphics-card solutions is immaterial.

Here is one aspect of a comparison:

X-Bit Labs processor power-consumption comparison graphs

I posted some sample benchmark comparisons in another thread from CPU Power-User Magazine:

SiSoft Sandra Drystone: QX9650 = 58,221 Phenom9700 = 36,743
Whetstone: QX9650= 45,949 Phenom = 31,032

Floating Point x4 iSSE2 (fitps) QX9650=190,270 Phenom = 120,716
RAM Bandwidth Int'ger iSSE2 MB/s QX9650= 9,329 Phenom = 5,759
RAM Bandwidth Float iSSE2 MB/s QX9650= 9,299 Phenom = 5,773
Futuremark PCMark05 CPU QX9650= 10,148 Phenom = 6,713
3DMark06 overall QX9650= 17,471 Phenom = 13,731
Sony Vegas (min:sec) QX9650= 2:53 Phenom = 4:19

Price-wise, the 9700 costs less than a third of the Penryn. But in consideration of the Kentsfield processors now available, and the fact that even a mild over-clock to a Q6600 can take you to the same level provided by the QX9650 at its stock speed although the Q6600 has only 2/3rds of the Penryn's L2 cache, the answer seems pretty obvious.

I can't make these decisions for someone else, but power-consumption is an element of cost, and the performance differential is evident.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Then it sounds like the Phenom may be right for you. I'm going to pull the trigger on a Q6600 in the next month or so, unless a killer deal happens earlier. I'm willing to spend the extra few tens of $ for peace of mind and 50%+ greater low effort overclocked performance. I intend to legacy game as well as crunch numbers & run VMs. ATM it takes about a 2.8 ghz core2 cpu to not bottleneck current generation video hardware in most current games. That will only get worse in the spring. Even if the two were equivalent clock for clock, 2.2 ghz is not going to cut it.

Oh, and that $100 AM2+ board wasn't crossfire, was it? I looked at it briefly, and only saw one PCIe x16 slot, even though it was a 790 chipset. If we're talking crossfire I think the cheapest crossfire capable 'Pro' boards for AM2+ are in the $200 range.

The MSI K9A2 CF has 2 PCIe2 x16 slots that run x8/x8 in Crossfire. The XS crew put it to 'torture' - got some decent OCs - and got into a p'ing contest with MSI tech support over running DDR2 1066.

I think the guy got banned from the MSI forums for being smarter than the MSI tech dood

 

[heyheybooboo]

LOL @ BonzaiDuck

Extrapolate much?

 

[v8envy]

How about that. The MSI K9A2 CF is $98 bucks shipped at ClubIT (and out of stock to boot!), and does have two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots. Everyone else has the 'platinum' versions of that board for $100 more.

If someone needs a low clock speed quad, has 2 ATI video cards and is seriously strapped for cash this may be just the ticket.

ClubIT also has the $255 Q6600 OEM, turns out. Also the 2.4 ghz Kentsfield Xeon for $279. It's a great time to be in the market for new hardware!

 

[BladeVenom]

One nice thing is that next generation AM3 processors should work in an AM2+ board with your DDR2. Intel's next processor Nehalem is going to need a new board. I think it might need new memory also.

 

[zach0624]

If you don't overclock amd is the way to go. Platform cost/performance ratio is slightly better with amd if you don't over clock. Right now good am2+ boards are cheap and multi gpu boards can be found for under $100.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
One nice thing is that next generation AM3 processors should work in an AM2+ board with your DDR2. Intel's next processor Nehalem is going to need a new board. I think it might need new memory also.

They said the same about AM2/AM2+ compatibility. We all know how that is turning out.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
One nice thing is that next generation AM3 processors should work in an AM2+ board with your DDR2. Intel's next processor Nehalem is going to need a new board. I think it might need new memory also.

They said the same about AM2/AM2+ compatibility. We all know how that is turning out.

Manufactured obsolescence may be the only way for AMD to make any money these days :shocked:

However, Gigabyte recently updated their bios on 690- and 770-chipsets to run Agena/Phenom.

 

[Nessism]

I'm running a 9500 w/ECS A700M-A motherboard - $220 from Fry's. No way to get into an Intel Quad for this kind of money.

Using this system for video encoding mostly so gaming performance was not much of a consideration.

Was considering a Q6600 and overclocking but the cost was a good deal higher - particularly if you don't already have a stout power supply. No doubt the performance would be greater though.

 

[MGMorden]

Personally, being an AMD fan (I run an Intel setup on my Hackintosh because OSx86 just works better on Intel, but otherwise my machines all run AMD), I am in the same boat, but I think I'm going to wait until the 9550 is out and then go with the Phenom. That's ASSUMING the fixed version of the chip isn't otherwise significantly more expensive than the current prices (about $190 for the 2.2Ghz version). I overclocked everything as a teenager, but as I've gotten older I found that the whole tweaking up/down, playing with different fan combos, adjusting voltage, picking certain mobos, etc, just wasn't worth it in the end, so these days I don't move anything off of stock settings. Seems like at stock, AMD will be the better buy.

Either should be a nice upgrade over my current Sempron 3400 (Socket 754 version).

 

[Martimus]

The 9600 actually does overclock to around 3GHz: 9600 Black Edition Overclocking

 

[v8envy]

Not on air they don't. "Running this retail processor on air cooling, we could achieve a stable 2.8GHz as well and even get it to run at 3GHz, just not under a 100% load across all four cores."

They didn't disclose what non-air cooling they used, but "Out of the four Phenom samples that we have used, one would do 2.8GHz, one would do 2.9GHz, and two would clock to 3GHz reliably."

I think their best possible 3ghz OC should be viewed the same way as 3.7Ghz Q6600 overclocks. Yes, it's possible, but you gotta get lucky and you're not getting it on a budget air cooled rig.

That's the 9600 BE as well, not just any old 9600 off of the 'egg. Those are selling about for about 10% more ($300 vs $255) than a Q6600.

Sure, the 9500 is the cheapest quad out there. But consider the total system price including OS, video, etc etc. By the time the dust settles the extra $60 is noise but the disadvantages are still there. And IMO not worth having for such a small total system price difference.