AMD releases new Phenom chips

GHoosdum

AMD's new processor lineup includes three introductions this week: Phenom 9950, 9350e, and 9150e. While the 9950 acts as a new step up at the top end of the AMD processor lineup, the other chips slot in at slower speeds but at significantly less power consumption.

The Phenom 9950 is an incremental advancement over the 9850, providing a clock speed of 2.6GHz, but at the price of an increase in TDP to 140W. The first 9950 release is a Black Edition CPU with a sticker price of $235, pushing the 9850 down a bit to $207.

The Phenom 9350e and 9150e, on the other hand, are a distinct departure from the 9950 formula. While the architecture is common Phenom X4, the 9350e and 9150e processors operate at lower speeds (2.0 and 1.8 GHz respectively) and also much lower power consumption. TDP on these e series chips is a mere 65W, making them the most power efficient quad-core CPUs on the market.

While AMD hasn't put out a formula to unseat Intel from the top of the performance heap yet, the low power Phenom 9350e and 9150e seem almost perfectly suited for the entertainment PC market.

Expect a full IC-style review of the 9350e in the coming days.

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More information can be found at AMD's product information site.

BuddyJ

The folks over at AMDZone have done a nice write-up on the chips, complete with benchmarks.

If I read correctly, the new BE chip should hit 2.9 GHz pretty easily. It may be a case of too-little-too-late, but it's also nice to see the Phenom finally coming into its own.

Snarkasm

A few of us were discussing in t3h IRCz, and figured we should put some of the info we're thinking in here rather than lost forever in the intertubes.

So the new 9950 Black starts at a 2.6GHz clock for $235, which is a very fair price - the 2.4GHz Q6600 we all know and love is going for $209 on Newegg at the moment, so they're mostly on par. Since the price points are roughly inconsequential, we have to look at power and overclockability, which in my eyes has Intel still winning, but the gap getting closer. The 9950 has a 140W TDP, while the Q66 stock has a 105W TDP. As we overclock, that'll change, but as a starting point, the 9950 will use more power and generate more heat right off the bat. Now Hot Hardware took a 9950 and a stock heatsink and got it stable up to around 3.1GHz ("easily," however that's determined), and that was at 58 degrees C. If we assume a good HS can drop 15-20 degrees off that chip, they can probably squeeze another 3-600MHz or more out of it, putting it up in the 3.4-3.7GHz range.

Now my G0 Q66 is running 3.6GHz on air (loaded) at around 55-58 degrees, but the best I've seen out of a B3 is probably Leo's 3.5, so it might be possible for the 9950 to be a better overclocker than the current-batch Q66s. I'd at least be interested to see what they could do with a good HS and some more time to test it out (and, of course, time for the supporting tech - mobo and BIOSes, etc - to stabilize), but at least for right NOW, I think both the price and the power differences are going to outweigh the extra couple hundred MHz you might get out of a 9950.

Bring on the tests!

Thrax

No way you're going to get 3.4-3.7GHz out of the 9550. The chip will melt, and heat is not what's killing the phenom.

BuddyJ

Some have suggested that the 9950 is a not seeing the fanfare from AMD because they aren't seeing it as a major release. It's more of a "Hey we can do this so why not?" chip. Perhaps it's a good sign for things to come, but they've got Nehalem to worry about. In the AMD vs Intel battle, it doesn't mean much. But for consumers, it's just one more new chip to play with.

Snarkasm

And the Nehalem benchies are looking RIDICULOUS. I still want to see what they're doing with this new no-FSB-approach though, it's not looking benevolent towards OCers.

Leonardo

best I've seen out of a B3 is probably Leo's 3.5

This Leo, me? I've got one Q6600 B3, which I run at full load at no higher than 3.2GHz. It's one hot sucker, too hot and too power hungry for safe 3.2+ operation. I did run it for a while at 3.4GHz, but good sense got the better of me.

It looks like AMD has made some progress, but given the huge power consumption difference between quad 2.4 and the 2.6, it leads me to be believe there is very little headroom available beyond the 2.6GHz bin. 3.1GHz is not what I would call a lot of headroom.

Maybe AMD is very slowly closely the performance gap, I don't know. I certainly hope so.

BuddyJ

Remember that it's 3.1 with the crappy stock AMD heatsink at 58C. 500mhz out of the box with minimal tweaking. A real heatsink should help coax that number higher.

Thrax

Not substantially. The heat isn't the Phenom's killer, it's a flat out ****ty and immature architecture, that may never improve enough for AMD to compete with it. The chip will just plateau.

BuddyJ

I don't think anyone is saying that it isn't. What we're interested in is where that plateau mark is.

lemonlime

In my experience, AMD chips (Athlon 64 and Phenom) hit pretty solid overclocking walls. Vcore increases and improved cooling usually buy less than 200MHz and much higher temperatures and power consumption. If it hit 3.1 on the retail cooler, I doubt it will go much further unless sub-ambient cooling is used. And then, of course, you'd have to work around the cold bug somehow.

Snarkasm is right, the Q6600 is still a better choice—and its based on the original 65nm Core2 architecture developed in 2006, not to mention Intel's inferior interconnect architecture. When Nehalem hits the streets, AMD will loose the only feature advantages it had over the Core2. AMD desperately needs to improve the efficiency of their cores. Phenom is more efficient than K8, but not nearly efficient enough. Additional cache, and higher frequencies will not save them—especially not when they are exceeding 140W TDP.

None the less, at least they are releasing some newer, faster products. I can't complain about that