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The Phenom's a good chip at it's price point. It's a budget quad core. When Nehelem quad cores arrive, then Phenom will be at 45nm with power savings (according to AMD). It does not matter if a CPU "beats" it's competition by a few fps or few seconds that most desktop users won't notice.

Look at the difference between the 9600 and Q6600:

Sure, the 8400 will change things for awhile, but I'm sure that yield issues with B3 will be corrected such that AMD will increase clockspeeds, and it will be even better with 45nm Phenom's.

Let's face it. Intel wins with enthusiasts because they're only into a few incremental fps in the latest game or seconds encoding -- plus they're mostly into overclocking. They get all upset over an errata that only matters if they virtualize (so I could see AMD fan enthusiasts waiting for B3). Now, enthusiasts are all upset over 8400 heat issues that may or may not be valid. Sometime's enthusiasts at all levels need a new hobby other than getting all hot and bothered over benchmarks and their "team" beating the competition.

I'd rather wait for 45nm but I think I'll still go with one B2 Phenom on March 15th, with a 780G board to use alongside the 3870x2 that's on the way. I can't see supporting Intel at this point because I'm not so selfish that I want minor benchmark wins to crow about as competition dies and the biggest antitrust violator in Technology gets away with their OEM Rebates and other questionable tactics during the Netburst days.

I'm a proud owner of two AMD Athlon X2 PC's with AMD 690G chipsets and a bit saddened that I own a P4 630, but the ATI X200 chipset was a good one.

FYI: Benchmarks above are cherry picked. However, I give you credit for not using an artificial memory bandwidth benchmark.

I'm sorry, but looks like you can dream on. AMD's 45nm is not that much better compared to their 65nm process, according to published results from IEDM. You'll likely see lowered speed bins, and slightly reduced thermal, just like their first 65nm processors. And to add to the insult, AMD hasn't demonstrated any working 45nm parts. This would likely put AMD's 45nm launch well into Q1 of 2009, assuming AMD is giving adequate funding to the respective teams. Personally I would speculate actual launch in Q2. Regardless of Q1 or Q2, AMD is already late.

As for Swift, there's absolutely no information on it now, even rumors. To put it simply, put all hopes on a future processor that has unknown potential is pretty silly.

Maybe Nvidia will purchase Via?

The supreme commander is cherry picked (q6600 has 4% performance gain instead of 9-10% ... see below) but the 3d studio max is fairly representative of the difference between the q6600 and phenom (on a clock-for-clock basis).

About a month ago I analysed the results from the 22 non-synthetic benchmarks THG.com's CPU charts had to offer, and found the following averages (clock-for-clock):

Phenom 9900 vs Athlon 5600+ (both 2.6GHz ... using 1 core)
Phenom is 13.6% faster

Q6600 vs Phenom 9700 (both 2.4GHz ... using all 4 cores)
Q6600 is 9.7% faster

QX9650 vs QX6850 (both 3.0GHz ... using all 4 cores)
QX9650 is 5.2% faster

The 3D Studio Max chart above shows the phenom 9700 with the result iof 52 seconds versus q6600 doing 47 seconds. Difference between the two is 5 seconds, 100 x (5 / 52) = q6600 9.6% faster.

Plus you have to equate the fact that this is just a simple pass as where if you do one hour it adds up to more time it would take with the Phenom 9600 as compared to the Q6600. So if you are rendering an hours worth of work a Q6600 will save time which = money as we all know.

In games its not really CPU dependant. Yes Supreem Commander is but most games are more GPU dependant hence the real question remeains the chips IPC and OC'ing ability(for us enthusiasts). So in the real world a Q6600 has more IPC per clock and can OC very well where as there is not as much of a chance that Phenom will or at least has not been shown to yet. Maybe B3 will help but I doubt it will give Phenom what AMD stated. 45nm may help but it will have to compete against Nehalem most likely thus it will have a harder time.

As for Intels GPU on CPU we have to wait and see what it will do. We cannot judge it yet as it may be based off of Intel Larabee and we have no idea what that is capable of. Yes ATI has very good graphics but don't think Intel isn't up to it. You ahve to remember that Intel has been around for 30+ years so they have a lot of experience in R&D. I can't wait really to see what happens in the next 2 years. Should be exciting.

instructions/(hz)^2? Never heard of that unit. Is that some sort of rate?
JK, I totally understand what you're saying. I don't understand why Tom's doesn't put typical resolutions of games in the CPU charts, it artificially inflates the importance of the CPU in games. I remember seeing a few weeks ago some other site did a review showing that most games are GPU limited and show no gains after C2D >2.2Ghz, or something like that. Therefore whatever game you're playing will not spit out another frame because you're running a 4.0GHz OCd E6850 rather than a Q6600 @ 2.4. I'd rather have more cores, personally.
4 @ 2.4 = 9.6 "GHz-cores"
2 @ 4.0 = 8.0 "GHz-cores"

You should have used the winrar beta bench.
I thought it hilarious that intel spent so much time and effort to get winrar to come out with a beta where the core2s would win, only to have the phenoms beat them handily at the same clock.

Link please. The only comparison I've seen has the 9900 slightly ahead.

Gah... the 9900 isn't even on the market for consumers yet. Is the projected price for the 9900 $350?

AMD Phenom 9900 Processor Review - Spider Platform

9900 fell short of their expectations.

Edit:

Another review:

AMD Phenom 9900 Review

*note those reviews were from last year.

Anyone know any reviews of this year?

heh, Grimmy strikes again. let's see those results (2008)