CPU-Z Screenshots And Initial Results
The new Phenoms will offer faster clock speeds. While 2.4 GHz instead of 2.3 GHz isn't much of an increase, AMD promises more in the future
We installed the CPU, which was still cold from shipping, in the MSI board that we've already used in several previous tests. We decided to try our luck with the BIOS version installed on the board (v1.3) rather than search for a newer version. The reasons were twofold: on the one hand, it seemed unlikely that there would already be a new BIOS revision for an unreleased CPU; on the other hand, we wanted to see whether the new CPU would work as a drop-in replacement in an existing board without extra effort. In the case of our MSI MS-7376, aka K9GA2 Platinum, it turned out that we were able to get away with using the existing BIOS version.
The system started without any trouble and showed the expected performance in our initial batch of tests. We will publish more detailed results in a full review of the new stepping in a few weeks. Power consumption was also in line with expected results. Our review sample, which has yet to receive an official product number from AMD, runs 100 MHz faster than AMD's previously fastest chip, while power consumption was slightly higher as well. The other results met our expectations. Thus, we won't delve into any deeper discussions for now. Cool'n'Quiet seemed to be implemented and working as well (as seen in the screenshot below), but it is quite possible that a newer BIOS revision may also add some improvement.
The idle clock speed of the B3 Phenom remains at 1.2 GHz.
