AMD's Phenom Unveiled: A Somber Farewell to K8
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2007 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking
Given the launch frequencies, you can expect that Phenom isn't a tremendously overclockable chip.
While we were able to run our 2.4GHz chip at 3.0GHz, we couldn't get it stable. Even 2.8GHz wasn't entirely stable, but 2.6GHz was attainable for benchmarks.
AMD's OverDrive Utility, note that it reads the memory controller as single channel because Phenom actually has two independent 64-bit memory controllers instead of a single 128-bit one. Current BIOSes and the AMD utility incorrectly report this as being single-channel.
All of our overclocking was done using AMD's nifty new OverDrive utility, which is a Windows utility that can control virtually every single BIOS option from within your OS. You can overclock individual cores, change memory timings, voltages and most importantly: it all works.
The application is a little slow to respond when making changes and it would be nice if there was a hotkey to bypass the application loading its last settings, but it's truly a beauty to work with and one of the best aspects of today's launch.
The Test
| CPU: | AMD Phenom 9900 (2.6GHz) AMD Phenom 9700 (2.4GHz) AMD Phenom 9600 (2.3GHz) AMD Phenom 9500 (2.2GHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (2.66GHz/1333MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz/1066MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz/1066MHz) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (X38) MSI K9A2 Platinum (790FX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X38 AMD 790FX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 8.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD 790FX Launch Drivers |
| Hard Disk: | Western Digital Raptor 150GB |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.09 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit |
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agello24 - Saturday, February 16, 2008 - link
im still not ready to switch to intel. ill be buying my phenom shortly.PeterCollier - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
How's that TLB cold bug working out for you?Verygood - Friday, January 8, 2021 - link
I’ve been in a coma for 13 years what happenedGenoR32 - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
I still believe in AMD, and i know they will release a nice product line-up in the coming months, or probably 2009... i have a Core2 PC now b/c i cant deny the fact that they are really strong CPU's... but my DDR3 upgrade will be on an AM3 system... i think they will be really competitive.Greetings
JumpingJack - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Are you still waiting?TheCatOfWar - Monday, April 23, 2018 - link
Not for the last year, haThatguy97 - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
Can't believe socket am3 is still aroundruxandy - Tuesday, October 20, 2020 - link
Well... that took a while, but it's finally happening in 2020.eye smite - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
I didn't comment on this review when it first came out cause I didn't want to read the whole thing. It reads more like a rant on a blog than a review, he didn't want to go to Cali, so what. In the time since this article the phenom has proved to be a good cpu, I noticed in the last week that HP and Gateway have started selling systems in Best Buy and Circuit City with phenoms. This cpu was rushed out and it will take a bit of time to mature. It's the same thing we saw with the athlon64 from 2k3, had it been as developed as it needed to be, they would not have gone from socket 753 to 939 to am2 and so on. Amd should have made the smaller leaps to a quad core athlon64 til phenom was ready, but they have bad decision makers these days it seems.JumpingJack - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
There was no rant in this article, there was a stern condemnation of an attempt by AMD to control the benchmarking and review process, to influence what should be independent and transparent review of a product to the marketplace.