AT's Phenom review up (11/19)

[AlabamaCajun]

Originally posted by: Zstream
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 is smarter than that, he knew what he was going to before he got the plane tickets. This event was about showing what the platform would do as a whole. I think AMD could have handled it better but it was just a marketing game he could have opted out of.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun

Originally posted by: Zstream
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 is smarter than that, he knew what he was going to before he got the plane tickets. This event was about showing what the platform would do as a whole. I think AMD could have handled it better but it was just a marketing game he could have opted out of.

You should try reading the article, instead of just being mad at how poorly the Phenom performs, OcHungry.

 

[jonmcc33]

Nice overclock! /sarcasm

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Tom's did a real review of the product and then show how much of an as5 pounding AMD took.

Tom's review was terrible. He included numbers from the X4-9700 which has been recalled, he didn't do any stability testing on the 3 ghz overclock he displayed (because AMD wouldn't let him), and his power consumption figures had disclaimers at the top of the page basically stating that the data was unreliable.

The only useful conclusion from the article, other than a review of the Spider platform which was so-so (and of no real interest to AM2 owners like me looking for a CPU upgrade), was that Phenom was around %13 slower clock per clock than Core 2 Quads.

Anandtech already spat out numbers like that in their preview article some time ago.

 

[Greenman]

On the plus side, I'm going to save a ton of money by not upgrading.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Greenman
On the plus side, I'm going to save a ton of money by not upgrading.

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance...

On a serious note here. I think AMD needs to get agressive with the prices. If you can buy a Phenom for half of what a Q6600 costs then it may be something a few people look at. If not, then they have no hope IMO.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Greenman
On the plus side, I'm going to save a ton of money by not upgrading.

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance...

On a serious note here. I think AMD needs to get agressive with the prices. If you can buy a Phenom for half of what a Q6600 costs then it may be something a few people look at. If not, then they have no hope IMO.

Half???!!! I don't think their margins are high enough to pull that off. If it's around the $200 price range I'd definitely consider it over a Q6600.

But then the 45nm Q series is here too...shoot...I would have loved to have gone AMD this time but I just can't justify it. Only way I COULD justify it is to get a 790FX board with a 5000+ Black Edition proc and overclock...but even above 3GHz it loses to lower clocked C2Ds. Sigh...COME ON AMD!!!! You can do better than that!!!!

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
On a serious note here. I think AMD needs to get agressive with the prices. If you can buy a Phenom for half of what a Q6600 costs then it may be something a few people look at. If not, then they have no hope IMO.

Shoot, I'd bet that they would sell all they could manufacture, if they were selling the 2.3 Ghz Phenoms for $239, or even $249. Of course, what do I know, they may sell every Phenom they can manufacture, either way. I mean, I'd be interested in one, if I owned a nice AM2 board, instead of one Skt 939 board, and one P35 board.

 

[Zenoth]

It's the K8's success that forced Intel to make Core 2, but sadly it's not the K8's upgrade this time around that will force anything from Intel. Intel from now on can do almost anything they want including increasing prices without fearing to lose their throne due to better overall performance and even better power consumption. Technically speaking I see no reasons to upgrade to a Phenom, sadly. I liked AMD, but now I can't just blindly go buy Phenom knowing what I'd be missing from that other boat.

On a side note, if AMD would have kept Socket 939 in mind and helped it remain well alive, by letting Phenom work on S939, then in such a situation I would definitely have bought a Phenom, avoiding to shell out more money for DDR2 Memory and a brand new Motherboard. But du to Socket 939's "death" now I am simply going with Intel when the slower frequencies Penryns are released in Q1 '08.

I can safely say this though: Thanks AMD for the K8, it truly was a blast to experience that one in its glory days, when it made Intel look nothing else but silly to even consider, those were the days.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Greenman
On the plus side, I'm going to save a ton of money by not upgrading.

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance...

On a serious note here. I think AMD needs to get agressive with the prices. If you can buy a Phenom for half of what a Q6600 costs then it may be something a few people look at. If not, then they have no hope IMO.

Half???!!! I don't think their margins are high enough to pull that off. If it's around the $200 price range I'd definitely consider it over a Q6600.

But then the 45nm Q series is here too...shoot...I would have loved to have gone AMD this time but I just can't justify it. Only way I COULD justify it is to get a 790FX board with a 5000+ Black Edition proc and overclock...but even above 3GHz it loses to lower clocked C2Ds. Sigh...COME ON AMD!!!! You can do better than that!!!!

A Q6600 is $280, you can clock that to 3Ghz without trying. That's why AMD needs more agressive pricing than $200...

Especially when a CPU that would only be $80 more (just uding your $200 figure here), was so much faster stock.

 

[zach0624]

For the most part I am not too disappointed with phenom. I will probably wait for the higher clocked version with a better stepping before I drop one into my AM2 rig. For the most part AMD is only behind by 10% clock for clock and in some media center stuff AMD is equal to Intel or in Crysis and Oblivion phenom performs great compared to intel(much better than some earlier reviews suggested). Also AMD's overdrive utility looks amazing and may be a reason for me to move to AM2. Somewhere I also read that AMD is supposed to scale better with more cores than intel does on one cpu and on multi socket systems(can't remember where but if you google search long enough you may find the article). For the most part AMD did a good job of becoming competive again(especially since people complained of penryn being only 5-10% faster than conroe in most non sse4 apps) and it seems to have hit a jackpot with its video cards meaning more money into the company.

 

[myocardia]

Zach, AMD's Overdrive isn't supposed to work with AM2 motherboards, only AM2+ boards.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

A Q6600 is $280, you can clock that to 3Ghz without trying. That's why AMD needs more agressive pricing than $200...

No, most people don't overclock.

But AMD needs to transition to 45nm fast and well or, well, we consumers are screwed.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Greenman
On the plus side, I'm going to save a ton of money by not upgrading.

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance...

On a serious note here. I think AMD needs to get agressive with the prices. If you can buy a Phenom for half of what a Q6600 costs then it may be something a few people look at. If not, then they have no hope IMO.

If they could hit 3 - 3.2ghz(oc'd even) be cheaper than the q6600 and offer quad 3870 with good performance, that'd be nice and I would even consider jumping ship.

 

[Yanagi]

Originally posted by: zach0624
For the most part I am not too disappointed with phenom. I will probably wait for the higher clocked version with a better stepping before I drop one into my AM2 rig. For the most part AMD is only behind by 10% clock for clock and in some media center stuff AMD is equal to Intel or in Crysis and Oblivion phenom performs great compared to intel(much better than some earlier reviews suggested). Also AMD's overdrive utility looks amazing and may be a reason for me to move to AM2. Somewhere I also read that AMD is supposed to scale better with more cores than intel does on one cpu and on multi socket systems(can't remember where but if you google search long enough you may find the article). For the most part AMD did a good job of becoming competive again(especially since people complained of penryn being only 5-10% faster than conroe in most non sse4 apps) and it seems to have hit a jackpot with its video cards meaning more money into the company.

If the phenom scales better than penryn performancewise as clockspeed increases, a higher clocked phenom would be a viable solution as the performace delta would decrease as clock frequency increases. I wish someone with a phenom AND a penryn would look into this. I think it is a pretty interesting question.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Yanagi
If the phenom scales better than penryn performancewise as clockspeed increases, a higher clocked phenom would be a viable solution as the performace delta would decrease as clock frequency increases. I wish someone with a phenom AND a penryn would look into this. I think it is a pretty interesting question.

It doesn't; using the Anandtech review the C2Q Q6600->Q6700 scales better than Phenom 9600->9900 in 7 of 13 benches (excluding Cinenbench R10 single-threaded). Of the 6 that Phenom scales better, there are 3 benches that would require a 3GHz Phenom to match the Q6600.

 

[CTho9305]

I was a bit surprised by the XviD encoding results - Phenom's SSE engine is about 2x as fast as K8's, so I would have expected it to do quite a bit better. I wonder if the binary Anand used was not optimized for Phenom (a K8-optimized binary would likely not be optimal for Phenom).

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Woe, myocardial infarction. No I'm not OCHundgry but he does agree with me on a lot of issues but that big Intel billboard on this forum probably was taken as a warning to stay the h*** away. No I'm not take aback about the AMD setbacks, they are discouraging but I'm not targeting Anand for that. QFT. I spoke out against the same kind of thing I see all the time, favoritism. Anand went there with a chip on his shoulder knowing Intel had this deal sealed and that this was just a dog and pony show, stop trying to make it look like the man is stupid. Tom's did a better article on the platform (I don't care if both fudged the benches). Don't do a Preview then turn into a whos better article. I REPEAT, yes we want stone cold freaking accurate benches. not AMD hyped, not Intel buggered nor Anand or CPU for that matter. I want to know where all this stuff stands but I also wanted to know about the platform and Tom's Delivered. I just went to Anands first because I trusted him. In BLUE AND WHITE it is obvious this whole forum is driven by Intel media. www.anandtech.com
No one take this personal, as I've stated I'm defending my stance on how all the so called review was perceived. I will not by an Intel because you say it's better, faster or flushes my commode. I will by the chip that works for my needs. As my aging Intel fleet fell behind in numbers, most of it has been replaced. 1 trusty 800Sloter still runs my help desk, a 3.2Northy keeps office stuff flowing and an Awesome Tualitin kicks in for testing (Yonah,Coroes roots). AMDs are no on the forefront to stay.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
No I'm not OCHundgry but he does agree with me on a lot of issues

Being in agreement with OCHungry isn't going to get you anywhere on these forums. That aside, your fixation with Intel bias is absurd. Most people in here were pimping X2 rigs before Core 2 hit the scene like a freight train. If you actually knew anything about these forums or Anand you wouldn't be rambling on like that.

Anand's review was a quality review that offered the best information on the chip that I've seen anywhere. The only thing he did not do was run more tests on the new memory controller or its performance, though we may see information like that in the upcoming 790FX article that Gary Key has been discussing in the motherboards forum. I'm sure you'll get all the 790FX/Spider platform info you can shake a stick at there. Personally I felt Tom's article was wanting in many areas, even on the platform side.

If you want people to see B2 stepping Phenoms in a positive light, buy a chip and show us how to get one running at 3 ghz or higher, stable, on a motherboard that we can actually buy today (something I intend to do if Abit will release a BIOS for my NF-M2 nView that will let me disable the L3 cache). If you want to dump on Anand while extolling the virtues of Tom's wretched journalism then go slum around on someone else's forum.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Anand went there with a chip on his shoulder knowing Intel had this deal sealed and that this was just a dog and pony show,

So, you still haven't read the article, huh, OCHungry? Why am I not surprised?:roll:

stop trying to make it look like the man is stupid.

Uh, I'm not the one calling him names, and implying he's being paid off by someone. Then again, if I did think things like that about him, I'm definitely not dumb enough to say so on the site with his name on it.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
Anand went there with a chip on his shoulder knowing Intel had this deal sealed and that this was just a dog and pony show,

So, you still haven't read the article, huh, OCHungry? Why am I not surprised?:roll:

stop trying to make it look like the man is stupid.

Uh, I'm not the one calling him names, and implying he's being paid off by someone. Then again, if I did think things like that about him, I'm definitely not dumb enough to say so on the site with his name on it.

First thing, I don't use name calling, though I did have a little fun with your handle but that's still not really a name call, apologies if you took it as offensive. I will ask you to stop calling me OCHungry though not offensive, I would prefer to keep his handle clear of mine.

-- Back on thread
I did reread the Rant, come was misread on my part at 4:30am but it still stand below Anand's work. After I hit page 2 I went directly to the benches.

Page 1, gave an overview not positive but seems fairly truthfull.
Page 2, off topic verbage and pics about another product.
Page 3, a overview of 790X/FX chipset, compared to about 7 pages on Toms.
Page 4, nice but light coverage on overclocking that I skipped because I was more intersested in the benching at this point. Remember I said I came here first!
Page (Benching) Fair reporting here, did what he could with what he had, other sites covered more details nut no problem here.
Final Page, actually a good writeup on moving forward but where I expected to see the rants.

I just found this to be a quick and dirty beat AMD down for letting him down.
I don't mind being called an AMD fanboy, thats just m preference for architecture. Fanaticism no, it's more about what I like more about the Platform than I see in what Intel is offering. Besides, other than a fe quips, I;ve not been bashing the Intel CPUs or the people who use them (I use 4+ of them). I have one Allendale that I was speaking of in one occasion but I never could get it to perform above any of my Athlons on a 965 chipset. We as supporters of AMD constantly see people saying it's stupid to support the platform, that's just wrong. Anand said it best, if you already have boards then Phenom is a good investment save the expense of changing the MOBO. I take it one step further in That I like the AMD chipset enough to be willing to buy the board too. My next board purchase will be an Nvidia server board with a pair of Barcelonas. I like the new Xeons a lot but when it came to looking for a board, I choked and went back to AMDs lineup.

I also defend Intel when people start bashing them BS that comes from the net.
Let's just keep this civil, I have no reason to dislike people here but I see a lot of bashing for no real reason. I do see Anand's reason for being pissed but "I feel" he should have cover the platform technology for those of us interested. I accept his rants from day one and his reasoning to prefer Intel at this juncture. I saw his comment on the final page about being all for AMD 3 years ago, I have not located the article yet.

In closing, I too am disappointed in the way AMD is handling things in the PR but some of it is coming from the internet that is filling in for where AMD is holding back info. This puts a lot of things out of perspective.

 

[justly]

Personally I wasn't impressed with Anands review, I quit reading it after the first 3 pages (I later went back and finished reading the rest). I felt the first three pages where nothing more than a childish tantrum. It doesn't even matter if his rant was truthful, it WAS NOT NECESSARY to regurgitate his disappointment with this launch as part of a product review. Anyone even remotely following the Phenom development/launch is fully aware that it did not go smoothly.

Even dismissing the first three pages I still felt this article was lacking (no real surprise to me as this seems to have become a trend). In older articles Anandtech used to ask why performance was a certain way , and conducted testing to determine an answer, this no longer happens. It would seem as if Anandtech no longer questions a benchmarks ability to provide valid results, and just reports that it must be this way because the benchmark told us so. This lack of investigative testing has had the effect of making Anandtech reviews mundane and uninformative for anyone not just parroting benchmark scores.

Notice I haven't said Anandtechs testing is flawed. What I am saying is that the tests themselves aren't being questioned as to their validity. If a benchmark reports inaccurate results or changes/eliminates certain aspects of how the program actually functions outside of the benchmark then what use is it? Is a scripted benchmark able artificially inflate a score by skipping a branch that would normally be initiated by the end user with a keyboard or mouse? I'm not accusing Anandtech of being the only site that blindly accepts benchmarks as infallible, just less willing to question the results.

In one of Anandtechs older articles office productivity was tested by two different benchmarks Sysmark and Winstone (if I'm not mistaken) one put AMD in the lead and the other Intel, the author of the article clarified what benchmark he believed to be more accurate in real world usage. I would find comments from the author very useful in reviews provided they look unbiased (meaning that the author approached the review in a professional manner, no rants, and it is coming from the authors own experience and not just parroting the benchmark scores).

As for the actual product being reviewed (AMDs Phenom) it does look to be somewhat lacking at this time compared to Intel, but it does look saleable either as an upgrade to existing AM2 systems, or in an OEM system. Will I buy it, no way, but then again I wouldn't buy an Intel quad core, I know my needs and I don't need a quad, I barely even need a midrange dual core. As for the platform as a whole, I think it has some nice features that could make it very popular to OEMs and average (non-hardcore) users like myself when coupled with a mid/low range dual core processor.

 

[NitOxYs]

After researching and reading at least 5 to 10 reviews I tend to agree wtih justly. Now we all know that Phenom had major scaling issues and TLB issues with its l3 cache. I hope that they fix alot of their bugs especially with memory benchmarks and as well as their cpu code. Alot of the memory benchies put Phenom way behind. Why? The CPU was pushed due to community bashing. They were forced to release a product that had not finished. This comes with consequences. You're going to reply that it should have been out way way earlier with Phenom. The reason why Intel never did a 4 core processor monolithic processor is because they had trouble scaling it and ran into many difficulties facing meshing it on a 65nm die. There are alot of bugs to be worked out with Phenom and hopefully with revisions down the line they can compete whole heartedly. I just want to vent about one thing though. How many of these applications are "optimized" for Intel? The B3 revision going to be released hopefully in later december early January will fix some of these bug issues. For me personally I wish they had worked on their Phenom(agena/barcelona) architecture for dual core processors first to compete with mid range and then latter released their quad core. I'm no fanboy, and I had always liked AMD and Nvidia combined and I like to see them suceeed. In all reality, if AMD failes then the FCC will scratch their heads. And maybe just maybe they can fix their issues with the HT Bus and other architectual issues.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
[sarcasm]Where was the Phenom article that Lal Shrimpi wrote it was all conroe and penryn.[/sarcasm]
Besides the fact that Intel pays him more or has better wine and cheese parties or beer and pizza, couldn't we have just the info on Phenom and leave all the effing Intel crap for the benchmarks and closing. [blunt]That review sucked[/blunt].

Yeah, you're right, you didn't actually call him a name, you merely implied that he's a liar. That more than makes up for your ignorant rant, huh?

Barcelona though less glorious in speed has a better power factor than it's competition with the exception of the low power xeons that might use less total RMS power.

So you not only can't read articles, you also can't read graphs?

 

[thekernel]

Originally posted by: NitOxYs
After researching and reading at least 5 to 10 reviews I tend to agree wtih justly. Now we all know that Phenom had major scaling issues and TLB issues with its l3 cache. I hope that they fix alot of their bugs especially with memory benchmarks and as well as their cpu code. Alot of the memory benchies put Phenom way behind. Why? The CPU was pushed due to community bashing. They were forced to release a product that had not finished. This comes with consequences.

I don't see how it was rushed. The scheduled release for K10 has been on the roadmap for some time. Granted, AMD roadmaps aren't all that reliable, but if anything K10 was delayed rather than moved up.

Furthermore, if it's true that K10 was moved up and rushed, why is the new Bulldozer core so close at hand? Granted I don't think AMD will meet their projections with Bulldozer, but the fact that Phenom seems to have a short shelf life is pretty telling that this chip was delayed not rushed.

Originally posted by: NitOxYsYou're going to reply that it should have been out way way earlier with Phenom. The reason why Intel never did a 4 core processor monolithic processor is because they had trouble scaling it and ran into many difficulties facing meshing it on a 65nm die. There are alot of bugs to be worked out with Phenom and hopefully with revisions down the line they can compete whole heartedly.

Source for why Intel didn't do a monolithic processor?

Besides, while it might have seemed like a good idea at the time, it is never comendable to make an architectural decision if it doesn't pay off. By all accounts there is little performance difference between an MCM core and a monolithic one, so if AMD made the decision to wait a year for monolithic knowing it would give little performance benefit then they made an obvious mistake.

Originally posted by: NitOxYsI just want to vent about one thing though. How many of these applications are "optimized" for Intel?

Proof for this wild accusation?

Besides, "optimized for Intel" is a silly term in of itself. Cheats are one thing, but if a software vendor decides to take advantage of Intel's architecture by tuning for it, that's not unfair in the slightest. If it's a canned benchmark you would have a point, but if shipping software shows performance improvements (like how the DIVX encoder uses SSE4 to huge benefit) then it is entirely relevant to the performance picture.

Furthermore, most people who accuse third parties of Intel specific tuning point to simply the use of the ICC compiler. This is obviously silly since not only is it a widely used compiler, but it provides great benefits for Intel and AMD architectures alike. Intel has put a lot of money into their ICC compiler and it shows.

Originally posted by: NitOxYsThe B3 revision going to be released hopefully in later december early January will fix some of these bug issues.

New steppings are great for tuning, but they aren't going to change the performance picture measurably. I defy you to point to one specific instance where a stepping drastically changed the performance characteristics of a processor.

Furthermore, by the time B3 is out, Penryn hits at the low end which makes matters worse for AMD.

Originally posted by: NitOxYsFor me personally I wish they had worked on their Phenom(agena/barcelona) architecture for dual core processors first to compete with mid range and then latter released their quad core.

This would have been a mistake. Intel is already slashing prices on quads and will drive them under $200 and probably under $150 in Q1. If AMD had released dualies only, they'd be competing on the low end, not the midrange.

Originally posted by: NitOxYsI'm no fanboy, and I had always liked AMD and Nvidia combined and I like to see them suceeed. In all reality, if AMD failes then the FCC will scratch their heads. And maybe just maybe they can fix their issues with the HT Bus and other architectual issues.

The reason for AMD's problems have more to do with Intel's success than AMD's failures. Intel is firing on all cylinders and hit a grand slam with the Core architecture, a fact that I think caught not only AMD but pretty much everyone by surprise.

I think AMD can fix some of the issues with K10, but they have a bigger problem looming in the form of Nehalem. Penryn will rule the performance roost next year, but Intel is already publically demoing Nehalem and by all accounts it will be and incredible chip that will build on the success of Core. AMD doesn't have anything to fight this except for some big plans with Bulldozer that are little more than paper promises right now.

I certainly hope AMD gets back on its feet, but I think this may be a sign of things to come. Certainly no one expected AMD to succeed with Athlon and later K8, but now that Intel is paying attention, it's going to be harder and harder for AMD to compete with Intel's economics of scale.

It's sad in a way, I'd really like to see a pair of juggernauts in this space. AMD, although certainly possessing some talented and driven people, simply can't compete very well with the much larger Intel unless Intel screws up majorly. Sure Intel made a pair of mistakes which let AMD run away with performance for a while (scaling of the P3 and the clock wars design of Netburst) but I have a hard time believing this will happen again. I think the lead that Intel has now is only going to get bigger and AMD is going to be permanently relegated to the mid range if they are lucky and the low end if Intel continues to succeed the way they have.