AMD Phenom vs. Athlon Core Shootout

By Patrick Schmid
published

Asus M3A32-MVP with AMD790FX Chipset

AMD provided an Asus M3A32-MVP for testing.

The Asus M3A32-MVP is based on AMD's brand new 790FX chipset, which supports PCI Express 2.0, HyperTransport 3.0 and ATI CrossfireX for up to three graphics cards working together. It was part of AMD's sampling kit and represents a pretty attractive choice for gamers. However, it is not necessary to run the Phenom; any other decent motherboard that is based on Socket AM2 will do.

The Asus M3A32-MVP comes with a massive heat pipe solution to cool the chipset and the voltage regulators.

Since the M3A32-MVP supports Crossfire with triple graphics cards, two bridge cables for Radeon HD cables can be found in the box.

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