the 9850 BE, 9750, 9550, are all on newegg.com now. Like 5mins ago, it is 10:49pm est.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2+50001...

Has anyone notice newegg.com is listing the new opterons and the 9550?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Desc

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103251ript...

Top notch review. The X4s do a little better than I expected.

Those CPU usage charts in the video encoding section don't show anywhere near 100%, which is surprising to me. Maybe that's why there's not as much spread between the duals and the quads as I expected? I expected video encoding to be able to peg four cores.

4 words:

Kentsfield available December 2006.

Since then, incremental increases.

We need another 'Core2' release with Nehalem to really keep things going. Not just more cores, but better single core performance.

The E8500 is really the unexpected star of this test and aligns better with most usage models outside media-heads.

#2, Scott mentioned that the mobo used didn't have the needed options for NB OCing. Bottom of the OCing page, IIRC.

GREAT TO SEE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR AMD COMING OUT OF THIS CAMP!

I love seeing you morons arguing about who has THE best, clock per clock, top extreme black super duper alpha and omega overclocking part. When the enthusiast processor is more like a ferrari. Nice to show, but who really mekes the big money is Toyota and their common cars. You see MOST people won't overclock, MOST people won't CrossFire nor SLI, MOST people just want an average system for a day in day out workload. So the only thing that really mather is this:

Keep struggling for the Extremely Over priced parts, so that the average parts (AMD or Intel, whatever) keep coming cheaper and cheaper every day. After all, I'll get, let's say, 75% of your performance, but pay less than 50% what you paid. Sounds nice to me.

But hey, thats just me.

Ps.: You americans are funny, you can't even realize that the US only answers for 7% of the world processor market. And the rest of the world is a bit smarter about how to spend their money.

In another time, a 20% overclock on a top of the range cpu would have been considered phenomenal (heh). Now it's merely ok to marginally disappointing. How times have changed.

If a 2.4 GHz X4 is called a 9750, and a 2.5 GHz is called a 9850, that only leaves room for one more speed increment - presumably 2.6 GHz "9950" - before the naming scheme gets awkward. Is this just an unbelievable lack of foresight on the part of the Marketing team, or is the X4 line going to top out at 2.6 GHz?

My Q6600 requires tremendous effort to be stable at 3 ghz. And by stable, I mean it runs everything nonstop, 24 hours a day, with all 4 cores utilized. And this is watercooled.

In the conclusions... "We can finally say with confidence that if you have an existing Socket AM2 system and want to upgrade, buying a Phenom looks like a more attractive upgrade path than making the switch to Intel."

I am assuming he meant AM2+. I have an AM2 board, but I know it doesn't take the previous phenoms.

Any chance of some FSB overclocking? While changing the multiplier is the best (easy and simple ) it is fun screwing every bit out of a CPU <grins>

Also I am not sure if I missed it but how where the temps at stock and overclocked for the CPU and systemboard ? Think water cooling may help squeeze a little bit more due to the higher voltage you can pump into it?

Some different system boards would be good to see as well for this and how they handle the memory speeds/settings and NB overclocking.

I enjoyed the review and I am glad I held off on an upgrade for my AM2+ board. Bang for buck still looks pretty good for me, now to talk to the War and Finance Minster ( Wife )

Yawn, near-Conroe performance over a year later. While, newly-released Penyrn-based units outrun both K10 and Conroe for less power.

The only thing that prehaps saves Phenom is its lower MSRP.

Good....but not good enough once the 45nm Yorkfield quads arrive.
You can add 10% or so to the gap between these Phenoms and the Q6600 already plus way more overclocking headroom.

Looks like the AMD vs. Intel debate is cranking up once again. AMD had the lead from 2003-2006. Intel will have had it back for two years by mid-2008.

Will it flip again as it has before?

Hm, up to 100 watts power difference between the Qs and the X4s is unfortunate. That's a significant amount of additional heat to pump out of a system. (edited for disambiguation)

This review totally sold me on the 84/8500. As much as I'd like the extra inches a quad will grant my e-peen, the only time I'd see that advantage is when I'm re-encoding video. Maybe i should hold off upgrading till the 45nm Phenoms come out; or maybe I should just OC my E6600...

Hmm... I think I'll wait for the 45nm version before I upgrade my X2 5000+...

I still won't be buying one as I'm now enjoying being able to afford high-end parts, but I'll start recommending them again for new builds on a budget.

It's nice to see that there is a low-end alternative again. Having AMD on top of intel was nice while it lasted but it was the kick intel needed to start producing competetive products again.

AMD overtook intel from a worse position than this almost a decade ago, they can likely do it again if (when) Intel gets lazy again.

Another awesome, incredible, outstanding TR review.
Excellent Job by Scott and the TR staff.

Also, no one writes articles with funnier lines then you guys do:
If their presence annoys you, hold up two fingers to the screen to block out the bars representing them while reading the performance graphs.

lol

I am glad i held up buying a Quad Core CPU. I am going to support AMD and buy their's, not only to keep the competition alive, but also because it seems I will get good deal on the overall platform.

4 cores,a "board with four second-gen PCIe x16 slots, a board capable of three- and four-way CrossFire X configs," and 4 to 8 gigs of DDR2 at around $500 is incredible.

Of course it wont be perfect, but as we saw with Nvidia's nForce 790i SLI Ultra chipset and board, even $350 and up for just the board does not buy perfection.

To quote a part of the article, "The Phenom's showing is respectable, but the E8500's is remarkable." That works fine for me. And you can't add more cores to the 8500 in a year.

Thanks again TR.

I have no problem over clocking the NB on my K9A2 Platinum 1.3 bios and 1.4 bios. Easy over clocking. I have been running 2000mhz NB and 2.7ghz Core with that bios on my 9600 BE.

So, now that the silicon is fixed, will we be seeing K10 Opterons hit the market again? K10 just isn't that exciting on the desktop.

Wow, despite the fact that AMD has really taken a huge step forward today, finally releasing a (non-buggy) Phenom that can almost do as much clockspeed as the AX2's, those charts were still quite embarrassing.

They absolutely, absolutely, must not screw up on the 45nm (on the AMD side).

I just can't get over Intel's absolutely dominant integer performance in the mandelbrot test. Its probably also integer performance that makes Intel shine in Linpack bandwidth. I'd like to see an article explaining the huge disparity.

A "pass" means the CPU made it through 4-5 minutes of the stability test in the AMD Overdrive utility.

That's not much of a criterion. 4-5 minutes? How is that indicative of stability?

Getting to 2.9GHz was very easy; the 9850 needed only a minor bump in voltage to make it there. Hitting the 3GHz mark took more effort and a lot more voltage. In fact, I finally settled on 1.519V at 3GHz for my testing, and even then, the system wasn't perfectly stable. I'd say this is a 2.9GHz chip for most intents and purposes. Still, I was able to take a screenshot and do some testing at 3GHz.

Then why did you provide 3.0 GHz results when that clock speed is clearly unsuitable? And even the 2.9 GHz level is dodgy, given it's based on "4-5 minutes" of stress testing.

I expected better from you, Damage.

I am the most excited about the overclocking. Perhaps a Phenom is in my future...

Great review Scott...im happy to see AMD getting their act together...competition is $$ saved for us all. I'll support the lil guy as well to help in this endeavor.

Am I the only one seeing absolutely no reason, unless you use your computer to run specialized exotic apps, to buy a quadcore cpu just yet?

For everyday computer use, and 99% of all gaming, I see it as a waste of money not buying a faster clocked c2d or x2 cpu compared to slower clocked and more expensive quadcore.

At least by the time I'm ready to upgrade all my machines - I'll have some money for the three proc's. I would think an X3 would be nice for my HTPC.

I am pulling for AMD, even thought I've switched to intel. Competition is always a good thing.

I think the thing to take away from this is that AMD may be lagging at present, but that this architecture has promise. If they could ramp the speeds up to the 3.0GHz range and scaled down to 45nm, this chip would be at least on par with what intel is turning out right now. They're just one step behind, at present.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think intel is in any huge hurry at the moment to scale down again and until Nehalem, AMD has a really good chance at catching up.