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BIOS update kills Phenom performance

BIOS update kills Phenom performance

Benching the “fixed” Phenom with AMD’s new BIOS shows just how crippled the chip is.

Comments

  1. GooD
    GooD Outch... This is not the publicity they are looking for to help them compete against Intel.

    Intel must be smiling a this time :rolleyes2
  2. Thrax
    Thrax In order to fix the TLB errata on the Phenoms, they had to nerf the performance of the chip. Two steps forward, five steps back.

    The chips with fixed TLBs at the silicon level will not have this performance penalty, and should be faster than the "Broken" Phenoms.
  3. primesuspect
    primesuspect So essentially what this means is: Under no circumstance should you buy a Phenom until the rev.2 silicon comes out? o.O

    :wtf: AMD. :(
  4. Thrax
    Thrax Yep, it'll be the third "Final" silicon spin for AMD. B1 was in-house, B2 is what we see, and B3 is supposed to be something like the Yorkfield for AMD.
  5. lemonlime
    lemonlime :(

    The performance drop with the errata fix applied is really unacceptable. It was difficult enough seeing the Phenom numbers before the quote-unquote "fix"..
  6. Leonardo
    Leonardo
    The performance drop with the errata fix applied is really unacceptable.
    It may be bad news for those of us who may have considered crossing fingers and trying AMD again, but it may actually not hurt AMD very much. I don't think it will make much of a difference with sales of branded machines. Will the average Dell, HP, or Acer Gateway buyer know anything about "TLB", errata, or 'performance loss' when he looks at a PC display at Best Buy or CompUSA? Probably not. Sure, we will, but what impact do we have on AMD sales? I'm sure the major manufacturers will use this information to leverage lower prices out of AMD, but I don't think it will hurt AMD much more than they've already hurt themselves.
  7. Qeldroma
    Qeldroma
    Leonardo wrote:
    ... I'm sure the major manufacturers will use this information to leverage lower prices out of AMD, but I don't think it will hurt AMD much more than they've already hurt themselves.

    Yes. They could try to underprice Intel- but that is going to be a tough gig to pull again when all Intel has to do is lower the price of their bottom teir ... and still sell a better processor.
  8. Leonardo
    Leonardo
    They could try to underprice Intel-
    They will have no choice.

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