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FFS, get a clue already. You are wrong on every level. The E6850 is not a Wolfdale, it's the older Conroe 65nm core. There are cheaper and faster 45nm quads available as the E8400. The Phenom is tested on an AM2+ platform, not AM2. 62fps vs 45fps is a massive difference playability wise. What does GPU choice have to do with it? Both platforms can be upgraded with a faster GPU, it doesn't take away the fact that Core 2 is a much better gaming CPU for Crysis.

I see you have nothing to say about the X2 6400+ benchmarks. What happened to 'Oh X2 is so fast I just creamed my pants?!".

The TLB is the issue.
They are afraid that it could be exploitable in a DDoS attack.
Without barcelona, and with the current pricewar, the phenoms are not economically viable.
I would not expect that they did any quad core wafers after the scope of the erata was discovered.
We should also remember that AMD is well known for having binning problems on early wafers. They should be able to get up to dual core speeds in Q4/08 or Q1/09.
I expect that the higher binned phenoms and barcelonas will transfer to 45nm around Q3/09

The better sites used to subjective tests. Sometimes they'd do blind comparisons with staff, sometimes they'd go out into "the wild"

Sometimes it's a good place to learn, sometimes the best benchmark is the people on sites like this.
I have learned to trust your "objective" benchmarks less and less over the last ten years or so. As often as not, it's the benchmark that decides the winner, but then the person who chooses the benchmark has more tools than that.
It used to be that when a site did a benchmark, they would supply a file, should you want to check thier results. Then things were a little more objective. There is a benchmark for what I say though. Compare the benchmarks used by THG in thier diferent anual cpu charts.
At the end of the day, there is only one benchmark that really counts, and it's very subjective.
I've been a hobiest, and sideline builder for may years, and about a couple thousand builds. I've always judged the quality of my builds by the enthusiasm of the user.

Encode 10 DVD movies, burn, and verify them ALL in a row, in one sitting, and time it. You'll be off by quite a large margin with the Phenom.

When Phenom "tocks" (Shanghai) and they get a few Revs at that node, and you can actually OC the thing 30% without a hassle, then ok, maybe it would be more worth it.

But, people buying now (not in 18 months) will notice a big difference if they are power users.

Otherwise, mom and dad won't know, you are correct.

In your haste to bash harna I think perhaps you should have proof-read your post before taking the knowledge high-ground here....
E6850 is indeed based on the older Conroe, but it was the last of the revisions (I believe) and is not that different to a Wolfdale based machine. "There are cheaper and faster 45nm quads available as the E8400" the E8400 is not a quad.
"62fps vs 45fps is a massive difference playability wise", you cannot make such a statement on average framerates. What if the average of 62fps was made up of them machine running at 200fps for x amount of time, but running at 1fps for x/10 amount of time. (Those are just arbitary numbers and have no mathematical basis on the percentages I used) That is certainly not playable for a large part. Lets now say that the 45fps was 45 +/- 5% for x time. Which is more playable now?
Average FPS are much like benchmarks, half the story for a quarter of the time...
Everyone here has an opinion (which however seemingly 'useless' doesn't give you the right to bash them for it... i may make an exception for "Thunderman"! ) so perhaps allow people to make it?
I'm glad there is discussion on what I started, but one thing that worries me when I read replies is the use of "subjective benchamrks", I would like to make it clear I don't believe in such things, I meant (as someone pointed out) personal user experience is always better than a benchmark, IMO.

http://www.techspot.com/review/84- [...] rformance/

Techspot has done a bit of a Phenom review which I thought might be of interest.

Quite a few of the scores has Phenom performing quite well though I still think the poor scaling on a few tests is indicative of a memory controller and WRITE caching issue that hopefully B3 will fix.

I just thought I'd throw something useful into the mix.

The comparison to the new E8400 is there - not sure if they have it over at the other E8400 thread yet ... I'll check.

Epselon84 writes:

What does GPU choice have to do with it? Both platforms can be upgraded with a faster GPU, it doesn't take away the fact that Core 2 is a much better gaming CPU for Crysis.

I see you have nothing to say about the X2 6400+ benchmarks. What happened to 'Oh X2 is so fast I just creamed my pants?!".

NEW!! MSI K9A2 Platinum 790FX Socket AM2+ Motherboard

Quad CrossFire (8X+8X+8X+8X)

9600 Phenom BE

Win VISTA 64

I would like to bet your 20 FPS just vanished into thin air baby.

8Mb (4 X 2) DDR 2 800

Let's see that Wolfdale setup eat this. Which is the sucky sytem now??

Oh and just for good measure, if you plonked that hopeless 6400+ on there it probaly do it to.

Still looks like the Q6600 is besting the Phenom 9900 in most benchmarks...

The funniest thing about this thread is it went to comparing Phenom to a dual core.

lukebird writes:

"62fps vs 45fps is a massive difference playability wise", you cannot make such a statement on average framerates. What if the average of 62fps was made up of them machine running at 200fps for x amount of time, but running at 1fps for x/10 amount of time. (Those are just arbitary numbers and have no mathematical basis on the percentages I used) That is certainly not playable for a large part. Lets now say that the 45fps was 45 +/- 5% for x time. Which is more playable now?"

Hear ye hear ye hear ye! because here speaks a critic with common sense. Even with an average frame rate of 65 Crysis will crunch a system to a halt in places. I definitely know this because I've played and finished it.

I'm currently in the process of tuning my drivers in the most intensive parts of the game at 16 X 10. If you have a powerful system lukebird is dead right, because in some not so intensive parts 100 + FPS can be readily obtained and does wonders for the average. A far more useful figure would be % of time below 30FPS.

But of course this test is presumably done in high settings, and since they can be turned back a bit without a great deal of visual loss the net result is that the Phenom is indeed a very good platform on which to play Crysis.

I can obtain 62 FPS in parts of the game in 16 X 10 medium with one 3870 and a 939 3800+ running 2.0 gig DDR 400 running the damn game in Vista under Dx 10 and I already know that it runs one hell of a lot smoother in Win XP.

With my 5000 BE & 8800 GT running under Win XP it will be considerably more. With either system I am not yet stretched to require either X-Fire or SLi solutions, but they are in range if I should change my mind. Every other game I have other than Crysis runs maxed out and smooth as. Crysis is a challenge and enjoy it, but there is still so much improvement on the software and driver front to go before it's necessary to hammer away at it with the hardware extremes. And let's face it we are still not getting consistent gains out of multi GPU/CPU setups, that time is still ahead of us.

Is that funny peculiar or funny ha! ha?

What's funny about that, isn't a dual core a multi core? Any huge advantage quad may get over dual is some time distant.

Comparison was simply to consider first C2D release Vs first Phenom release, nothing more. All architecture start with low speed and graduate to higher speeds. I can't understand why the Phenom is treated any differently, but somehow it sucks, because the competition is a little tougher today than it was for the Core 2 18 months ago. Well I guess that's progress for you.

And to TC thanks for the link, but the first comparison I turned to made me chuckle a bit:

source: http://www.techspot.com/review/84- [...] rformance/

"For reasons that are unknown to us the Phenom processors deliver superior performance in the PCmark05 graphics test. In fact, so does the Athlon64 X2, so we believe this probably has something to do with the on-die memory controller."

RESPECT

True, a personal experience is going to be better on all accounts, but benchmarks and reviews from websites such as toms are really all most have to go on because of the cost issue that is involved in these reviews, since we do not get the parts sent to us to try out before we buy them. They are a great basis for many of us to not only make recommendations for initial part releases, but also to help with the backing of our arguments and most importantly, they help lead to what new products we buy on a personal level...thus giving us the ability to at least share our personal experience with others about said product. So in essence they are not completely irrelevant and hold more value than I believe many give credit to. Just thought I would point that out...feel free to disagree.

Best,

3Ball