Phenom TLB patch benchmarked (Tech Report)

[harpoon84]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13741/1

There is a general 14% hit across the board in application performance, and synthetic memory benchmarks show as much as a 20% penalty. Thankfully, the difference between retail and ES Phenoms is nowhere as great, about 2% overall.

Things are looking pretty dire for AMD at the moment...

 

[Acanthus]

This is terrible news, this will put dual core phenoms down with X2s...

At least the stability problems are worked out, lets hope AMD starts dumping cheap quads on all of us :thumbsup:

 

[Nemesis 1]

Ya. They are going to need to sell those 4core and 3core native cpus cheap tho if they want to compete with INTEL DUAL CORES. Qcore Intel is simply in a league of its own .

A high clocked Wolfdale will compete with a phenom pretty closely.

SO if AMD were to price the 9500 @ $125 it would be reasonable enough choice over a wolfdale.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
This is terrible news, this will put dual core phenoms down with X2s...

At least the stability problems are worked out, lets hope AMD starts dumping cheap quads on all of us :thumbsup:

By the time Phenom X2 is released AMD will have a new stepping that solves the TLB issues.

This is more a 'stopgap' measure for current Phenoms with the TLB bug.

 

[AmberClad]

Wouldn't it be better for the average user to simply not use the patch? What's the likelihood you'd actually run into the TLB bug?

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: AmberClad
Wouldn't it be better for the average user to simply not use the patch? What's the likelihood you'd actually run into the TLB bug?

Not too sure, I don't think it's THAT common, but I've seen review sites having problems benchmarking 3DMark06 and Photoshop. It's probably quite rare, but is obviously serious enough for AMD to release this patch.

Like I said earlier in another thread, unless you are actually running into serious stabilty issues, it's probably better to just leave it unpatched and run the small chance of an occasional crash. Well, it's either that or you lose a whole heap of performance.

 

[taltamir]

it really depends on the program you run... for example photoshop likes to get it, most things shouldn't. However, crashing sucks... And its not even an option as basically every board is gonna come with updated bios that applies the patch automatically without revealing its existance to anyone, and without giving you an option to turn it off. unless you have an 790FX board in which case you could disable the patch using their OC software.

 

[SX2012]

The only problem i can find with my Phenom and 790FX is that i have to run the memory at DDR2 800(the bios is defaulting me to 800) because 1066 causes bad things to happen. This could be a problem with the motherboard and the memory compatibility more then the cpu's fault. However, the effect of performance at 800 or 1066 is negligable for a 2.2GHz chip.

I have beat the shit out of my system. 3dmark 06, Sisoft CPU and Memory burn in's, Memtest, hours of Autogk, Crysis everything on high except shaders on medium. The only thing i havent done is go out of my way to buy VMware so i can force my system to do a bunch of emulation operations at full load while doing a bunch of other crap.

Ive read tons about TLB errata, The performance hit from the fix, but zero about how to make the system halt.

 

[nonameo]

I want to see it tested with the L3 turned off completely.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Yikes. Fears are indeed confirmed - that's quite a big performance hit in some cases (and I'm not just talking about the synthetic memory bandwidth score).

 

[heyheybooboo]

I don't think it's that bad after seeing the Tech Report chart.

I think the biggest concern is staying on top of vendors and AMD geeting new spin samples out
so the -50's can be properly recognized by new BIOS without executing the patch.

I'll beta test a $150 Phenom with the TLB errata for 'em

 

[gmofftarki]

Keep in mind that there's evidence that would seem to indicate that the quad core architecture and new process.

Obviously, the fact that the CPU died isn't a great sign, but this article seems to suggest that K8 v. K10 performance isn't nearly where we should expect, and we may expect some surprises from the xx50 Phenoms coming out soon, if they've managed to correct the TLB error:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=3092&p=5

That being said, AMD has to do something to get HTT into the hands of more enthusiasts before Nehalem comes and and destroys any minor intellectual property advantages AMD might have in one fell swoop.

I am curious about the price points of these new RV635 processors for the 3650 and 3670 though... the 3850 is already priced more than reasonably for the average gaming consumer. Will these new GPUs allow a 'reasonably-halfway-decent' gaming card to find its way to the consumer for less than 150 dollars?

 

[Regs]

:laugh:

All I can do right now.

 

[Killrose]

So if you have a B3 revision of the Phenom which supposedly wont have the TLB errata
bug, should you not have the patch installed i.e.,bios flash of course.

 

[harpoon84]

I would assume the BIOS is smart enough to recognize the difference between B2 and B3 Phenoms...

Otherwise... it would be sad (but hilarious non the less! ) if the BIOS inadvertently reduced B3 performance as well, even when it doesn't have the TLB bug!