Phenom 9600... good budget chip?

[Xstang]

Recently, I've seen a fair share of deals on these chips - like around $100, compared to $200 earlier this year, and it looks like hell of a deal.

In anybodies opinion, is it really? I've been thinking about a ~$500 build for my dad, whole POS 4yo emachines is failing, and a 9600 looks like a good cheap place to start, figure, 4gb of ddr2 and a ~$80 vid card for the dual monitors and business apps he uses (he never plays games).

Anyone care to talk me out of this? I've had the bug to do another build, and doing an amd box sounds fun....have an E8400/P5k/8800gt right now for myself.


Also curious, what kind of PSU's have people been running with these chips? They kind of seem like a hog, but $99bux for a QC...any advice?

 

[doormatderek]

I'd say go for a faster/cheaper x2. He won't notice the difference plus they use less power. He could always upgrade in a year or so when AMD comes out with a decent quad. My x2 5400 is only 2.8ghz but it is more than enough for me.

 

[Outlander_04]

Phenom with xx00 numbers [instead of xx50] have a production fault that limits performance .
A better choice would be an xx50 triple core or a newer 7 series athlon x2 [ 2 core phenom ]

 

[Just_An_Engineer]

Phenom with xx00 numbers [instead of xx50] have a production fault that limits performance .
A better choice would be an xx50 triple core or a newer 7 series athlon x2 [ 2 core phenom ]

It's not the bug that limits performance, but rather the BIOS setting that "fixes" the bug. If you disable the fix in BIOS then there is no performance hit. I do recall that there was an issue where Vista was enabling the fix regardless of what the BIOS setting was and I'm not sure if that was ever resolved however.

@ xstang: For $100 it's a fantastic deal if you need a quad core but not necessarily a fast quad core. Where the quad core processor will really help you versus a dual core is if you are going to be multitasking. I'd gauge how often your father will be running multiple applications at the same time and use this as the determining factor for whether a quad core is warranted. If not then I'd follow Outlander's advice and look into an 8X50 triple-core our 7X50 dual core. I would note however that the BIOS support for these processors is not as widespread as it should be so make sure to check that your motherboards supports them.

 

[V3NOM]

who cares about power efficiency anyway? people didnt seem to mind with P4's, and i doubt cpus are as power hungry as those beasts..

 

[MU_Engineer]

who cares about power efficiency anyway? people didnt seem to mind with P4's, and i doubt cpus are as power hungry as those beasts..

The Phenom 9600 has a 95-watt TDP, which puts it around as warm as the coolest Prescotts, which were rated at 86 watts (others were 110 W.) However, the Phenom 9600 will run cooler than a Prescott despite throwing off about as much heat because AMD's heatsink is a bunch better than Intel's Prescott heatsinks.