AMD Phenom vs. Athlon Core Shootout

By Patrick Schmid
published

Test Components & Test Experience

AMD Phenom 9900 at 2.6 GHz

We used a Phenom 9000 CPU and set it to 2.6 GHz clock speed, which resembles that of model 9900. Since the BIOS of our test motherboard doesn't allow us to switch off individual cores, we forced Windows to run as a single processor system, using only a single core. We did the same thing with the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ after setting it to 2.6 GHz as well. This meant that the Phenom should have the full advantage of its features in a direct apples to apples comparison against the Athlon 64 X2.

CPU-Z 1.42 didn't work on our test system, so we had to step back to version 1.41.

Four cores, 4x 512 kB L2 cache, 2048 kB L3 cache and 600 million transistors.

Patrick Schmid
4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • spearhead
    its architecture it fine but
    it is clock speed the phenom lacks. if amd can just bump its speed up to around 3ghz-3.6ghz then it would make good competition towards faster intels. i can conclude from this benchmark that if you buy an phenom 9850 and clock it around 3ghz you have much more horse power then you would have with an athlon x2 6000+ however some benchmarks might tell you something else it makes sence if you use 1066mhz memory or just 800mhz mem
    Reply
  • tagasur
    i wish tom's would update this topic with new benchmarks on the amd phenom 9850be. i'd like to know if it's more stable now that the "nasty bug" has been remedied with the march 2008 product line refresh.
    Reply
  • brian1143
    Well this review says its not much more performance. I'm upgrading from 939 and actually thinking of getting the $60 AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 (AM2+) and OC it to at least 3ghz and run 1066 memory. I'd rather save the money for the future rather than have a few extra FPS.

    Intel's core i7 really is clearly the better processor with more headroom, but AMD has always had them in the price to performance ratio department. AMD isn't going away and perhaps they can make a better processor like when Athlon 64 came out or at least close the gap and let their price to performance ratio carry them the rest of the way. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phenom-ii,2119.html)

    Reply
  • mypobox
    Is an athlon II x3 really better then a phenom I x4 for 73$ at newegg ??
    Reply