AMD's Phenom catches up to Intel?

AMD's new CPU has impressive technology but has yet to show compelling speed. Will AMD keep a competitive edge if its high-end processor (processor) hasn't yet been as fast as Intel's 1-year-old CPU?

AMD's new Phenom processor and Spider platform for desktops have helped AMD make impressive jumps. The Phenom processor is manufactured on a 65nm process, featuring a 'true' quad core design and improved power management technology. But when I tested the Spider platform and Phenom processor, the results showed that AMD still had a lot of work to do.

Has there been a problem?

Tested with the unlocked 2.6GHz Phenom 9900 processor, this official processor must not be available until the first quarter of 2008, with an estimated price of less than US $ 350. Currently, the fastest Phenom available on the market is the 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 (OEM price is 251 USD) and Phenom 9600 2.3GHz (283 USD).

The Model 9700 2.4GHz, which costs less than $ 300, is also expected to appear in the first quarter of 2008, and the 2.3GHz Black Edition Phenom unlocked version also appeared when you read this article.

Although both 9500 and 9600 have been widely available, AMD recently acknowledged a bug in the Phenom and Barcelona processors that could stand still if the system load is running at 2.4 GHz or more with some rare software. meet. While the BIOS update fixes this error, but according to members at the Tech Report website, this fix slows the speed to 10%. Faster Phenom processors that AMD is preparing to release in the first quarter of 2008 should address this drawback.

Disappointed results

Testing compared Phenom and Penryn systems using the same components: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS graphics card with 320MB RAM, 2 Western Digital WD2500AAJS hard drives set up RAID 0 (stripled) and system memory DDR2-800 2GB . Test 2 unlocked Phenom processors running at 2.6GHz and 2.3GHz on the Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe motherboard with AMD 790FX chipset.

When running the Phenom 9900 at 2.6GHz, the test system scored 107 points of WorldBench 6 beta 2, not much faster than the average score of 96-point Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 systems. The E6600 is an old processor, currently priced at about $ 230 (price on newegg.com) compared to $ 350 for 9900.

Of course, the fastest Phenom processor available in the market is only 2.3GHz and the speed of this model is 99 points, not much advantage when the price is higher than Intel's old competitive model to 50USD. On the other hand, we don't have comparisons with Intel's current high-end model: $ 1,000 and scored PC WorldBench beta 2 on the same test configuration. By the time the faster Phenom processor appeared, Intel also had the popular Penryn processor line to compete.

The first Phenom system tested, CyberPower Gamer Ultra CF 3870, cost $ 999, running the Phenom 9600 2.3GHz processor and ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics card, which is still less impressive at 95 points.

AMD currently has no answer to Intel's SSE4 instruction set that speeds up multimedia tasks, perhaps this has helped Intel make a speed difference in a number of predefined applications. In contrast, unlike Intel's quad-core models with architecture based on two dual-core CPUs that share bus interfaces, Phenom is superior in architecture because it has four separate cores. More and more applications take advantage of multimedia scripts (such as SSE) and more than two processor cores to improve speed, but with what Intel has so far, perhaps AMD will hardly be able to withdraw Short distance.

When AMD released Phenom in November last year, the 2.6GHz Phenom 9900 running system, two Radeon HD 3850 cards, AMD's 790FX MSI chipset and DDR2-1066 2GB RAM, scored 105 points, significantly faster. Compared to the Polywell 580CF-2900 system using AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, the latest generation of AMD has achieved 93 points far from claims of 32% improvement by AMD.

Difficult period

Reviewing everything, 2007 was not the year of 'good weather' of AMD. In fact, things didn't go well in the middle of 2006 when Intel introduced the Core 2 Duo CPU. After 3 years leading in speed, AMD suddenly dropped: when running at the same clock, the Core 2 Duo processor was about 10% to nearly 20% more often than the Athlon 64 X2 processor.

AMD's OverDrive utility has an impressive array of options, allowing setting multiplier and voltage on each processor core.

Not only that, almost as soon as AMD spent $ 5.4 billion acquiring GPU maker ATI, the company had to follow in the speed race with NVIDIA. This gives AMD the professionalism of GPU and chipset, plus not being dependent on NVIDIA, which has been a longtime ally, but has begun to support Intel 1 year earlier, further reinforcing the perception. AMD's 2nd position.

In 2007, AMD also fell behind in competition for processing technology. Intel produces Penryn chips with a 45nm line, allowing more transistors to be integrated per millimeter than the 65nm technology AMD introduced in the Phenom chip. This also means there are more processors on each silicon plate, so the price is lower and is another advantage of Intel.

AMD's latest 65nm Opteron consumes very little power, is currently competing very well in the server market, but this does not make sense for ordinary users.

Communication

There is no way to regain the speed crown for the CPU, AMD tries to redirect people to focus on graphics card technologies and chipsets. This is not a completely wrong direction, but the speed in the game is usually more dependent on the GPU than the CPU.

The new Spider 790FX chipset works well, supporting AMD's HyperTransport 3.0 I / O bus, giving 20% ​​more bandwidth than the previous version. 790FX also incorporates four ATI 3800 PCIe 2.0 graphics cards on one motherboard with the technology AMD calls CrossFire X. The first tests on technology sites like Anandtech show that the 3800 graphics cards can be horizontal It is on par with all other graphics cards in terms of speed (except for the latest models of NVIDIA) and also has a very good power consumption index.

AMD allows users the ability to fine tune power consumption (as well as the ability to adjust the Phenom processor speed) to a surprising degree, with a new OverDrive utility.

Not only is the overclocking tool, OverDrive allows users to adjust the voltage setting and the multiplier multiplier according to each core. For example, if you are playing a game that supports only 2 CPU cores, you can create an OverDrive profile to overclock 2 of 4 Phenom cores and slow down the remaining 2 cores, reducing power consumption and 'lowering. heat 'system, help 2 more active employees' more martial arts land'.

If you don't like to edit hardware, OverDrive has the option of adjusting the speed by just one click, the utility will measure the system score and automatically raise the speed at a safe level.

If AMD's 65nm production line can produce Phenom processors with high overclocking capabilities, gamers can find value in unlocked versions like the 2.3GHz Phen Edition Black Edition.

According to AMD, the motherboards on the 790FX chipset will be very competitive compared to the latest motherboards running Intel's Penryn processor. Next, Spider-based systems can be an interesting choice for popular gamers, because they only have to spend less on CPU, motherboard and memory, but can combine them with 4 graphics cards. 3800 is also quite reasonable price. Although the CPU will not be able to compete with Intel's same-price models, especially with the popular Penryn processor line expected to appear earlier this year, an AMD CrossFire 4 graphics card system may be a Real gaming machine.