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THG Labs In Depth With AMD Spider
The Last Gunslinger writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has published detailed results of their laboratory analysis of AMD's recently released Spider platform, including the Phenom 9500 and 9600 running on 790FX chipsets. Amongst other interesting details, the 2.4GHz Phenom 9700 has been pushed back to Q1 2008. The 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 benchmarks on average 13.5% lower than Intel's Q6600 quad-core CPU...and the MSRP for the Phenom is about 13.6% less as well. Much is made of the AMD OverDrive utility, by which the THG labs were able to OC the Spider platform by 25% (3.0GHz) using air cooling alone."
My blog
Ok, I can deal with it taking a few pages, and you wanting a few ad hits, but only taking up half of my screen width, and then only using 1/3 of the remainder for text broken by seemingly useless photos... not going to bother.
Summery 4tw
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For Gord's sake, not THG... They're well-known for accepting "tips" in the past, have a horribly laid-out site that favors 90% ads with 10% content, and their reviews are anything but "in-depth", catering for the lowest denominator. I also love it when they draw brilliant "conclusions" that contradict their own data.
THG is a wart on the face of internet journalism, in fact, it can't even be called that. Unfortunately they still have too much weight for $ome rea$on.
Much is made of the AMD OverDrive utility, by which the THG labs were able to OC the Spider platform by 25% (3.0GHz) using air cooling alone.
And almost everyone with a Q6600 can get it up to 3GHz on air too, even on the stock heatsink. With something a little more special, like a Thermalight air cooler, speeds of 3.4->3.6GHz are not uncommon. If we look at the benchmarks in the TomsHardware article, the Phenom gets its ass kicked nearly everywhere across the board. It can be argued that this is because most apps are not optimized to work on quad-core chips yet, but even in the benchmarks where quad-core is clearly a benefit, Intel still edges out a respectable lead with their reasonably older technology.
The advantages of the Spider platform are that you won't need to buy a new board for future processors
We've heard that before! Okay, AMD has done something pretty clever with making the chips compatible across the board.. but I'm willing to wager that the percentage of PC owners who actually upgrade their machines year by year is reasonably low. There are a lot of enthusiasts who do it, and this is likely AMD's market if their performance wasn't so poor compared to Intel nowadays, but computer parts are cheap enough to get a new machine every couple of years instead. Certainly this won't be of any interest to the main manufacturers.
Still, I'm glad AMD's there. Their presence is helping to keep Intel honest and the prices generally low, but as an ex-AMD diehard, I'm not seeing any reason to go back to them yet.
Tom's Hardware agreed to the terms of AMD's carefully-managed benchmarking sessions. Way to drink the Kool-Aid, Tom's. Anand stuck up for his own integrity as a reviewer and produced a much better review of the chip. Moral of the story: If you want a Phenom X4, wait for the B3 stepping!
Since THG managed to inflate this a wee bit too much, here's a quick summary of what's new:
- Up to eight processing cores (one quadcore cpu, four single-core graphics cards)
- Targeted, of course, at the enthusiast market.
- Weird bug when running >2.3 GHz. Top-End model (Phenom 9700) not available until very later on. Disabling L3 Translation Lookaside Buffer fixes this and costs some 10% performance.
- (According to THG) processors some 13% slower and cheaper than corresponding Intel models. Graphcis performance has more variations, nVidia stays undisputed performance king, with it's relatively new 8800 GT being arguably the best midrange choice.
- Up to 42 PCIe 2.0 lanes total; Graphics via 2x16 or 4x8.
- Power-efficient Northbridge (some 10 Watts of usage) and GPUs (especially in 2D mode which is, thanks to Aero, Aqua and Compiz, slowly disappearing)
- Lots of critizism for stability problems in testing systems (not too troubling) four days before launch (troubling).
Long story short: AMD, thank you very much for trying, I'll stay with, and continue recommending, Intel/nVidia.
Unfortunately the stability of B2 chips past 2.3 ghz has been called into question thanks to problems with the Transition Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Anandtech was unable to get their B2 chip stable past 2.6 ghz despite the fact that it would run at speeds as high as 3 ghz. It is telling that reviews on AMD's supplied system (like Tom's) did not include any real stability testing of the much-touted 3 ghz B2 stepping Phenom X4.
The AMD's are less powerfull then the Intel in this race. Okay, no harm done, but why on earth does AMD then price them at the same dollar for performance ratio as intel? Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it.
Sounds nice in theory, but if I am buying a new cpu at the top of its range (and therefore paying a premium) I want to either have the highest speed OR a far better deal. Computer components often are priced on a curve, the slower, the cheaper, usually leading to a sweet spot where you get the best price for performance. Is it smart of AMD to make straighten this curve into a line? For 13% more power, intel just charges 13% more? No wonder they are losing once again, they used to be the company that was the best value for money. Perhaps they need a reality check AMD YOU ARE NO LONGER EQUAL TO INTEL, the days that your CPU's were better are over so you can't charge as much anymore.
a performance of 80 for a price of 50, now that would be a sweet, I could then reason that, well I get less power, but I save a lot of money. At this rate, I might as well buy an older intel and get a far far better deal.
It seems a pity AMD is once again second, the deals were so much better when intel and AMD where constantly at each others throat.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
HotHardware has some pretty extensive coverage of the platform and new Phenoms as well. There's a lot fewer pages to sift through and more data on performance.