AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition review -
1 - A Black Edition Introduction
The Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition
Last years introduction of the Phenom 9500, 9600 and 9700 were, as you guys know, not meticulously successful. AMD released an, in theory, great architecture. It arrived really late on the market, yet more importantly it had a vicious bug which we now all know as the TBL erratum. These two facts really damaged any marketing spin that AMD could give a perfectly interesting micro-architecture, as by patching out that bug, they where loosing performance greatly, yet was needed for stability. That however was the B2 core revision of the processor.
It's now April 2008 and AMD released their Phenom X4 50-series processors, with an all new fixed B3 core, hopefully they can now leave the past behind them and move forward with a processor that can actually start competing with the competition.
So get that in your brain real tight: The biggest deficit of that B2 revision processor, the deletion of the TLB erratums, is now fixed in the B3 edition.
Today we'll look at the new B3 revision processor and continue where we left of with our newest Phenom review.
To do that we need to chat a little about the architecture underneath that heat spreader. The Phenom is based on what is called the 'Barcelona' architecture. The silicon has four native independent cores merged together into one die; opposed to Intel who merges two dual-core chips together in one die. AMD claims due to the independent cores the technology can be be faster than Intel's solution in multi-threaded applications, their technology should be more efficient.
Let's have a quick architectural overview, and then dive into what it's all about .. performance benchmarks.
We test three AMD processors today, the Phenom II X6 1075T, Phenom II X4 970BE and Athlon II X4 645. They are part of the AMD Q4 processor product line update, arming their processor lineup with more value and higher performing CPUs.
AMD Phenom X4 945 and 955BE processor review|test
Today AMD is releasing two processors in the Phenom II line-up, the Phenom II 955BE and the Phenom II X4 945 processor. Both processors can be considered and positioned in AMDs high-end segment, yet will be priced friendly. Yields are good, clock frequencies go up, performance goes up. And that's nice as the Phenom II series processors offer great performance for the money you have to lay down on the table. AMD Phenom series processors are slowly ripening, and are aging like fine wine (they get even better over time). Guru3D brings you an in-depth performance review and architectural overview on both these processors. Oh yea .. and we'll overclock the living daylights out of it as well.
AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720BE review (AM3)
A test on AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720BE review socket AM3 processors. Socket AM3 Phenom II processors. Processors that are pretty much the same as the Socket AM2+ processors yet now with a DDR3 memory controller. DDR3 memory will allow the overall performance of the platform (your PC) to gain again a little in speed. Over the next few pages we'll tell you all about these new processors, their specifications and of course will check out performance.
AMD Phenom II X4 920 and 940 review test
AMD Phenom II 940 and 920 test. AMD releases the new Phenom II processors. Now manufactured at a much smaller fabrication processes, 45 nanometer, and has different amounts of cache. The result... their processors can now run at 3.0 GHz fairly easy, run cool and still have enough headroom for a nice tweak or two. Pretty significant, pretty interesting.