AT's Phenom review up (11/19)

[josh609]

Yeah, what a let down.

 

[Glavinsolo]

AMD

YOU LOST!

Now to reconcile your loss you should ship all your phenoms unlocked or you will never make a return on your investment.

 

[Bacstar]

I'm a little disappointed in the launch of the Phenom's which probably works out for me anyways. I just recently upgraded from a socket 939 X2 3800+ to a AM2 X2 6000+ system. If and when the Phenom's get released at 3ghz, I'll definitely be looking for a drop-in replacement to my existing setup.

As far as I've read so far, it sounds like Intel will be releasing some $1000+ cpu's, and we should all hope AMD recovers sooner rather than later. I know at that price, upgrading my system will be events that happen every few years carefully debating if it's worth doing or not instead of now which i do without hesitation.

 

[Idontcare]

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

Anand's comments and expressions relating to his firsthand experiences with the situation is the closest you are going to come to having any insight into the world around you when it comes to the desktop computer market next year.

You need to do more reading/listening and less typing/yapping.

 

[Roy2001]

Originally posted by: 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.

We can safely say that Phenom shrink the gap between K8 and C2, but it is simply not enough to close it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It is as I expected. Like Bacstar mentioned before, AM2 systems were really inexpensive compared to jumping onto a C2D or Quad. Now you can drop in a quad for a reasonable amount of money and get an instant boost. That's the benefit I see here. Current AMD customers need niot purchase a whole new board and memory to keep up. Hopefully they price these CPUs correctly. I mean you wouldn't want to see a 2.4Ghz Phenom priced where the Q6600 is. Not for the performance deficet. At least that's what I think. If they can get a good price scheme at retail and not have some issues going to market with them, I can see it being relatively successful. For someone looking to build an inexpensive system the past few months AMD has usually been cheap enough to mention. Although people always play on the fact that you can take a $100 C2D to 3.0Ghz and even more, you really had a lower initial dollar amount with AMDs stuff because most of the better overclocking boards for a C2D were a bit pricey. Lately that trend has stopped somewhat, you can find good overclocking Motherboards for under $100. Hopefully they can keep up at least on a dollar for dollar basis. Intel won't likely be putting effort into the desktop market if they don't feel pressure to do so. Prices would also steadily rise as a result. Both bad outcomes.

 

[sparks]

It's simple, currently Intel offers more for my dollar than AMD does at the price range I'm looking at. No brainer. And if I am looking at something higher end, then there is no choice. What AMD needs to do is price their processors accordingly as they did with their GPU, on Newegg, the 3870 can be had for 220 while the 8800GT for 280 and up, AMD needs to suck it up and be more aggressive on pricing.

 

[brainhulk]

Lol @ tomshardware review. : "In the end, if you're looking to make the most of a long-term investment, AMD is without a doubt the better platform choice."

wtf are they smoking?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: brainhulk
Lol @ tomshardware review. : "In the end, if you're looking to make the most of a long-term investment, AMD is without a doubt the better platform choice."

wtf are they smoking?

They apparently really like the motherboard, and AM2+ is going to be around for at least a year and a half.

 

[Nedder]

Although the Phenom loses across the board, it's very close for x264 encoding and Crysis. Those are the two "killer apps" for many people.

The real problem is that although they come close to stock q6600, we all know the q6600 can be easily bumped up to 3.0ghz and then the Phenom gets slaughtered again. If the Phenom's can get reliable o/c to 3.g0hz then the race isn't over.

Why didn't Anand have q6600 3.0ghz benchmarks? That's what we all want to see. The Tom's benches are a bunch of crap. They don't even have Crysis or COD4 results. Instead they have Warhammer, Serious Sam 2 and Quake 4. Stale enough games?

 

[Gary Key]

Just a side note -

I have two retail Phenom 9600 units - top overclock at this point is 2.64GHz on one and 2.52GHz on the other, this is 24/7 stable, the problem is that the boards we have right now do not properly support lower ratios with these CPUs, hoping to have new BIOS spins tonight that allow downward ratios but it appears to be a lot harder than they first imagined. If you are expecting to overclock the current Phenom lineup, it looks to be difficult at this time, hopefully this changes as yields improve. Just an example, a B2 2.2ES sample would not do more than 2.4GHz, the binning is that tight right now.

The 790FX is really good, in fact, almost too good for the Phenom at this point although the schedule slide on the SB700 is a killer at this point, not so much from a performance viewpoint but from having additional SATA and USB ports along with additional PCIe lanes for networking and audio options. More on the 790FX experiences here - 790FX Status

 

[Pederv]

For some odd reason I can't see the first page of this thread.

But any way,

Am I still considering getting a Phenom based system? - YES

Am I going to get one before the end of the year? - NO

Why don't I buy an Intel based system? - Because I support the underdog and Intel has never been the underdog.

I'm not in a hurry to upgrade what I have, but when I do upgrade my system it will perform better than it does now and it will cost me less than my current setup cost me.

If AMD has gone belly up by the time I get around to upgrading, then I guess there won't be a CPU underdog anymore and I'll end up getting an Intel based system.

Signed,
An AMD Customer

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
Got to say I love reading reviews written by Anand himself, he does great work. With the whole Lake Tahoe thing I found it quite funny Intel just packed a QX9770 in a box and sent it to AT, shows how Intel HAVE learned from their mistakes of the past. AMD however seem to be repeating the mistakes of the past,

I agree, I like reading reviews by Anand, because he tells it like it is. That's extremely rare, I've noticed. I also liked how he explained why he didn't go to Lake Tahoe, only to come back with canned benchmarks. I was actually hoping that nobody from anantech would be there.

I hope Phenom can go the way of the 38x0 series GPU's in that they are not really top performers but for their price they're an excellent buy.

The problem with that argument is that it's considerably more expensive than it's only competition, and can barely overclock. BTW, if you can keep them cool, 3.6 Ghz isn't rare at all for G0 Q6600's. I hope that AMD decides to lower the Phenom's prices, so at least someone buys them. I can see a Phenom 9700 @ $229-239 selling quite well. As a matter of fact, I'd most likely buy one at that price, just to "support" AMD.

 

[Sylvanas]

Thanks for the info Gary! Wow the binning is so close right now I'm amazed they even got it 'released' this year, hope some new steppings can remedy the OC situation.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: 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.

You mean add a bunch of Viral forum BS, did Anandtech respond to this considering a bunch of people posted in these forums?

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Zstream
You mean add a bunch of Viral forum BS, did Anandtech respond to this considering a bunch of people posted in these forums?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here... viral forum BS?!

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: Zstream
You mean add a bunch of Viral forum BS, did Anandtech respond to this considering a bunch of people posted in these forums?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here... viral forum BS?!

Oh, you do not know about Viral marketing? I believe Anandtech can help explain....

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: Zstream
You mean add a bunch of Viral forum BS, did Anandtech respond to this considering a bunch of people posted in these forums?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here... viral forum BS?!

Want me to translate it for you? He said "Wahhh, wahhh, and finally wahhh, the Phenom didn't turn out to be anything like AMD said it was gonna be, and it's your (along with Anand's) fault, not AMD's."

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Zstream
Oh, you do not know about Viral marketing? I believe Anandtech can help explain....

Oh, I know what viral marketing is, I just don't think Intel needs much of it at the moment, to be quite blunt...

I am interested in seeing who you think is a viral marketer here on these forums.

Hey, it's not a bad profession actually, post on forums and get paid. Is Intel or AMD hiring atm?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: brainhulk
Lol @ tomshardware review. : "In the end, if you're looking to make the most of a long-term investment, AMD is without a doubt the better platform choice."

wtf are they smoking?

They apparently really like the motherboard, and AM2+ is going to be around for at least a year and a half.

and I'm sure everyone who has a P965 or 975x board is complaining that it's junk after a year? Heck, you can overclock a quad pretty well on a P5B.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Hey, it's not a bad profession actually, post on forums and get paid. Is Intel or AMD hiring atm?

I'm now accepting offers, to be a viral marketer. Note, only offers from Intel, AMD, nVidia, or AMD/ATI will receive a reply. The price today is $2,000/week. Send your PM's to myocardia, here @ anandtech.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Hey, it's not a bad profession actually, post on forums and get paid. Is Intel or AMD hiring atm?

I'm now accepting offers, to be a viral marketer. Note, only offers from Intel, AMD, nVidia, or AMD/ATI will receive a reply. The price today is $2,000/week. Send your PM's to myocardia, here @ anandtech.

I'll beat his offer at 1,200 a week!!!

 

[Daverino]

Well on a side note, I'm probably the only Intel fanboy here, if such a thing exists, so I'm kinda getting a kick out of all this. Was not happy with my Prescott, but I'm very happy with my E6750.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Hey, it's not a bad profession actually, post on forums and get paid. Is Intel or AMD hiring atm?

I'm now accepting offers, to be a viral marketer. Note, only offers from Intel, AMD, nVidia, or AMD/ATI will receive a reply. The price today is $2,000/week. Send your PM's to myocardia, here @ anandtech.

R O F L

Can i take an offer too? Shiet... im looked upon as a cooling and overclocking specialist.

But anyhow, im kinda sad phenom cant put out. I was thinking about building a phenom rig so i can resetup SLI to play with while skulltrail gets reviewed and released.

Incase people are wondering whats so hot about skulltrail, its Intel chipset + SLI. and the ONLY intel chipset that will offer it.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Wow I feel like one of the few AMD fanboys in the club here. Come on, it had nothing to do with the benchmarks. Page two was an Intel ad for gad sakes. Tom's did a real review of the product and then show how much of an as5 pounding AMD took. See the point yet! Anand writes good articles but 2 pages of rant followed by the expected benches and no product review LAME! I might just cancel my CPU sub after that.

I'm looking at hardware mainly servers both in Barcs and Xeons. It comes down to spending a few hundred extra bucks for the underdog because I think FSB mobos suck (my personal option here). Whats a Active and Passive chip. Why not just let be by to friggen zeons but that's just my reasoning. I don't think dollar for dollar the small increase in speed I'll see is worth skipping native quad for duals.

Now go buy some intel stock!