AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition: New Hope?

By The Editors of Tom's Hardware
published

Slower Than Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600

Comparing the performance of the Phenom 9600 Black Edition with that of a Core 2 Quad Q6600 ends in a disappointment for AMD.

At its stock speed, the Phenom 9600 BE lags behind its rival from Intel by 13.5%. When overclocked to 2.7 GHz, the Phenom 9600 BE is still not quite able to catch up to the Q6600 running at its default speed.

This chart shows the performance of AMD's Phenom 9600 Black Edition compared to Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600.

The Editors of Tom's Hardware
3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ShadowKai
    I think on page 14 the author meant:

    "When Cool'n'Quiet is deactivated, idle power consumption rises to 51 watts. The jump in power consumption at 2.70 GHz is a direct result of the core voltage increase from 1.250 V to 1.400 V."

    And the bars for Phenom 9600 BE and Phenom 9600 BE (CnC) should be switched around.
    Reply
  • I think it's also important to mention the fact that Vista SP1 includes it's OWN TLB fix which overrides the bios setting of many boards. I used an app that works in conjunction with Crystal CPUID to change the MSR directly to deactivate this secondary TLB fix. It caused a dramatic improvement in performance; the quick and simple WinRAR bench went from 232 to ~1300 after the fix. Just think it's worth mentioning!
    Reply
  • I think I may have found a new problem with this bug. I have a Phenom X4 9600, and have tried two different motherboards. The problem occurs when running Windows 7. BSOD with a message stating that the operating system did not receive an clock interupt signal from the second processor. At first I thought it was a bios problem, but have since had to replace the motherboard. Tried Windows 7 again after replacing the motherboard and still having the same problem.
    Reply