AMD's flagship Phenom X4 9950 BE announced: Intel laughs, points

AMD just pranced out its latest trio of desktop processors including its new 2.6GHz quad-core Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition ($235) -- AMD's top o' the line desktop proc. The Black Edition branding makes this processor ideal for tweakers and overclockers. HotHardware's already done the job of putting the procs through their respective paces. As you'd hope from AMD's flagship desktop CPU, the X4 9950 is faster across the board than the previous AMD title holder, the X4 9850, albeit, just 5%. That puts it about level with Intel's Quad Q6600 processor but no match for Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX9650. AMD continues to lag Intel in terms of performance per watt as well. Hit up the read link when you're ready to sprinkle a little silicon speak onto your morning ritual.

[AC @ Jul 1st 2008 1:53AM]

come on AMD. get your act together, we need a good rival to intel.

[David @ Jul 1st 2008 7:23AM]

I remember when they had their act together, when they had better chips than intel, but intel still had like 75% market share.
Intel sold an inferior product for more money, so its no wonder AMD can no longer compete in terms of R&D dollars

if they are going to compete effectively, they need a nice cut of a fat antitrust fine slapped on intel

right now they just don't have the money

[Chuckles McGee @ Jul 1st 2008 7:52AM]

Ah yessirre, back in the day, when I was but a wee li'l whippersnapper, I can still remember those times when AMD was a real fighter: a contender. I was just a young lad then, but oh how we delighted in each titan out-doing the other every two weeks! It was so long ago...


Oops. I just pooped myself.

[thedesolate1 @ Jul 1st 2008 4:15PM]

Yeah i remember my amd athlon thunderbird 1.1ghz.... It gave me a feeling of superiority over the heard using their pentium 3's.... I can tell you I did things with a measly 128 mb of ram that no1 else was able to do on their pc's.

[thedesolate1 @ Jul 1st 2008 4:22PM]

Even if AMD got their act together.... it would still suffer because of issues with windows and amd processors..

[JiggaT @ Jul 24th 2008 3:04AM]

You know, I use to be a loyal amd fan but I have lost my faith in AMD. I bought AMD's 9950 quadcore a week ago and had nothing but problems with that chip, even when it was replaced still some small issues. I also couldn't keep the heat down below 60 celcius no matter what I did. I kept my case open and bought large fan to be placed infront of the computer. I don't think it was a very good idea for AMD to buy out ATI especially around the time Intel was heating up their competition releasing quads. AMD still can't perform competitivly with the Intel chips.

I finally gave in and bought an Intel Q6600 for 199 dollars a month ago and haven't had any issues at all. I am waiting for AMD to get their act togather because they will soon lose a lot of consumers that put faith in their products...

[LuvMuffin @ Jul 1st 2008 1:56AM]

does it utilize the 45nm silicone technology?

[LuvMuffin @ Jul 1st 2008 2:00AM]

*silicon

[chris fredette @ Jul 1st 2008 11:56AM]

nope and that is their problem.
AMD can't afford to keep up manufacturing with Intel.

[Kax02 @ Jul 4th 2008 1:15PM]

@chris fredette

Odd, the roadmap has AMD moving from 65 to 45nm in their server and desktop chips by mid 09. They'll be moving their laptop line into 45nm in 2nd half 09.

They're a step behind but from all the hype around it seems like they have the possibility to get silicon to 3GHz+ it's just more or less they're dragging their feet with no actual reason behind it. As noted in the commentary, if it's 2.6 matching a 2.4 intel then it'd be a bad scenario to be turning out 3 - 3.2GHz chips not meeting the bar with Intel.

=/ It'd be nice to see these guys at each others throats, I think they're both starting to get focused on the mobile market a bit more with Atom, Fusion chips and so on.

[loosely_coupled @ Jul 2nd 2008 1:53AM]

kax02

"seems like they have the possibility to get silicon to 3GHz+ it's just more or less they're dragging their feet with no actual reason behind it."

That's not what I have read on Arstechnica et al. They say that the 65nm Phenom is tapped out at 2.6 because of power and heat. Doesn't look like even 2.8 is going to be out before 45nm "Shanghai", and 3.0+ is a pipe dream before then.

[James Cameron @ Jul 1st 2008 2:04AM]

Do you know how much the Extreme QX9650 cost? Point and laugh at Thomas Ricker.

[Jon Doe. @ Jul 1st 2008 2:18AM]

Nope. Still pointing and laughing at AMD. Pathetic is an understatement.

But at least they are good for the "budget" market.

Sort of like patting little Tommy on the head when he has to take 3rd grade over again.....Good try sport. Good try.

[alur @ Jul 1st 2008 2:36AM]

The QX9650 goes for 1,000+ USD. It's silly that they don't compare it to something like the Q9300 or the Q6700, but it's not hard to see that AMD aren't doing very good on the CPU market right now. At least their new GPUs are kicking ass though :) The Q6600 is only 200$ on Newegg btw.

[Wes @ Jul 1st 2008 3:03AM]

@James Cameron
No, I think we should be pointing and laughing at you and amd together. Even the Q6600 has more overclocking potential, runs cooler and at a cheaper price performance.

The point Thomas was making which apparently you blantely missed was that if your a true PC Enthuasiast with a large budget cannot get much if he is amd-exclusive due to brand loyalty.

If he wants the best he can get performance wise, he'll need to go intel. If you have a large budget cause your love your hobby and your hobby is PC gaming/photoshop/3d modelling, you won't be able to get a good amd-chip that competes with intel's current technological powress.

You'd be better to get a Q9450 priced at $300.00 for a $100.00 more and way better performance than this at $245.00. or get an E8400 and overclock it to 3.5-4ghz for much better performance at $200.00 price point which is even cheaper than this amd offering.

If you were really really enthusiastic, you could get a intel extreme qx9650 which is what the author was trying to say. If you were really really enthusiastic about computers and amd-exclusive, the best you could get would be a X4 9950 at 1/2 the performance at best.

Not to mention, Intel is about to increase their own performance even at 2.6ghz clockspeeds with the new Nathalem chipset over their current top of the line extreme processors. So if this is the best amd can offer, how outdated will they look when intel increases its performance by 50% over their current xtreme processors?

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if when the 4870x2 comes out, if you try to cf two 4870x2s if this weak amd processor doesn't end up being a bottleneck for its own graphics card.

[fh @ Jul 1st 2008 3:58AM]

I got my Q6600 for $189. :)

-Months- ago. :D




And I've got it running at an easy 3.0ghz, with no voltage increase and no extra cooling whatsoever (the X4 9950 vCore was bumped up to break 3.0ghz).

[System48 @ Jul 1st 2008 9:23AM]

It was a bad comparison, he should've said it's no match to an OC'd Q6600 or Q9450.

[McBUNT @ Jul 1st 2008 2:19AM]

I've got the Intel Q6600 and that costs $289NZ ($219US), cheaper then this new AMD offering.

[Campbell @ Jul 1st 2008 3:23AM]

You're a Kiwi? Oh damn...

[OddManOut @ Jul 1st 2008 3:35AM]

So it's roughly the same performance, for roughly the same price. The exact performance/dollar ration is probably a few percentage points in Intels favor, but compnay vs. company it's not the absolute performance slaughter that a $235 AMD 9950 vs. $1000 Intel 9650 mash up would suggest.

And I rather suspect you can crunch more numbers with 4 AMD 9950s for less money in a given period than you can with a single Intel 9650 (course you may need 4x the peripherals as well, but still)...

And when you consider (if I'm not mistaken, and I might be as I'm not as hardware driven these days as I used to be in my gaming days) that the Phenom will have a 2000mhz Hypertransport bus, while the QX6600 will only have a 1066mhz FSB, and that the AMD motherboard is likely to be a little bit cheaper than a comparable Intel model, I'd say you probably get about equivalent performance per dollar in the 'real world'.

Intel has the top dog, no disputing that (and it's worth noting that the Q6600 has been out a loooong time already), but it's not as if AMD doesn't have an available CPU that would meet the needs of 90%+ of the personal computing world...

[McBUNT @ Jul 1st 2008 3:42AM]

You're hardly a prize, mate

[McBUNT @ Jul 1st 2008 2:20AM]

I've got the Intel Q6600 and that costs $289NZ ($219US), cheaper then this new AMD offering.

[donaldj001 @ Jul 1st 2008 8:54AM]

Well, I'VE GOT new socks on!!!

[happy_penguin @ Jul 1st 2008 2:22AM]

Great headline. :D

[RL @ Jul 1st 2008 2:37AM]

140W TDP on this chip???

I think AMD actually had a (sorta) good thing going with its low wattage X4s as I was thinking about putting one of those in a cramped HTPC (whereas I think something like the 95W Q6600 would just get too hot). But to try and go head to head with the C2Qs just doesn't make sense to me. Intel has that market cornered for (at least) this generation (and most likely Nehalem as well).

IMHO, AMD should keep working on low-wattage alternatives to Intel's flagships. This is what made them so attractive during the P4 era and, while I think the C2D doesn't leave as much room for improvement in that department, it would still mean some kind of useful differentiation in an increasingly difficult marketplace for this manufacturer.

[cmdwedge @ Jul 1st 2008 2:41AM]

It's all well and good for the Intel fanboys to have a laugh over AMD's effeorts to produce a competitive CPU to rival the high-end Intel offerings. However, we should all keep in mind that as long as AMD is lagging this far behind, it completely drops any necessity Intel may have to bring out faster, better, and cheaper CPUs. If you don't have any competition, why bother striving for something amazing? We'll just see minor 100Mhz speed bumps for the next few years unless AMD can really pull something out of the bag soon.

I love my C2D, but I really want AMD to give people another option.

[Wes @ Jul 1st 2008 3:35AM]

I tend to disagree with this belief that if amd didn't exist, Intel would stop progressing in terms of computer progress.

To be honest, its counter-productive to the most important thing to any company on the planet: Profit.

Idealy in Intel's perfect world, customers will buy new processors or new computers with their processor in it, once every day. In reality, most people upgrade their computer once every 2-4 years. By 'most people', I mean the average-consumer. The enthusaist upgrades a bit more often such as every 1-2 years.

Part of the reason average and advanced computer users upgrade is the belief that buying a new computer will be much or significantly faster than their old pc. I wouldn't buy a new computer if the new computer was only going to be 5% overall faster and costed $1000.00 for example. Nor would most common computer users.

When we would buy a new computer if we were only getting minor 5% increases is when our old computer dies. I suspect my current E6600 which has already lasted 2 years with my nice thermaltake ultra 120 will continue to keep it nice and cool running stock for a good 5-10 years more.

If computer users only upgraded their computers once every 5-10 years when they died, Intel would sell less processors as the demand would drop. Less sales = less profit.

If the demand for processors drop, Intel would need to drop prices to encouage customers to purchase new pcs which would negatively effect profit or increase prices to compensate for less sales which would reversely reduce sales even further.

Alternatively, they could produce faster processors to a significant degree to convince the average user to upgrade their pc while maintaining current prices(which has been the current and successful strategy used by Intel and amd for the past 15+ years).

I don't see any reason why they would abandon a proven marketing strategy that has worked successfully for so long just because they eliminate their competition to gain 90-95% marketshare.

Who knows, it might be that AMD gets replaced by IBM's cell processors someday as the second-running up.

[fh @ Jul 1st 2008 4:31AM]

I agree with Wes.

But I'll put it differently. A lot of people complain that Intel has been "holding back" on releasing their fastest CPUs due to lack of competition, saying that Intel is just milking the market with its "average" chips.

But really, if Intel spent all of its time fabbing only its top-of-the-line CPUs, it would have incredibly low yield-per-wafer, resulting in low supply and extremely high prices, and lots of dissatisfied customers. It would be terrible for the PC industry, where only a fraction of people would be able to afford "luxury" Intel chips, while everyone else would be forced to take whatever cheap offerings AMD had.

Moreover, when AMD ruled the enthusiast crowd with the Athlon, the average user was still content with the slower P4/Celeron, taking whatever OEMs gave them. With Core2, Intel has managed to outperform -both- enthusiasts' and average users' products from AMD. There is no direct raw-performance competitor, and yet Intel is still greatly improving the PC industry -- and not just the enthusiast segment.

[TheRequiem @ Jul 1st 2008 2:41AM]

The QX9650 is over $1,000. That's more than four times the price of this AMD chip, and is hardly a consumer desktop product.

You know what? VW's top of the line Jetta just can't compare to the power of Audi's R8 (ignoring for a moment that they are the same company.) Let's laugh at the Jetta.

AMD has pushed out a solid product to compete with Intel's best (reasonably priced) product, and should be applauded for it. Without the competition, we wouldn't be getting anywhere.

[McBUNT @ Jul 1st 2008 2:58AM]

You fail. The article says the performance is on par with the Intel Q6600, which costs $219US. The Q6600 overclocks well too.

[TheRequiem @ Jul 1st 2008 3:29AM]

Yes, I know, but it also says "no match for Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX9650."
I'm just pointing out the absurdity of comparing the two.

[KarlW @ Jul 1st 2008 8:45AM]

The two are being compared on the grounds that they are both flagship models. That is, they should represent the best engineering that each company is able to produce right now.

And when they are compared on that ground, taking only performance in to consideration, Intel win.

[CosterMonger @ Jul 1st 2008 3:25AM]

AMD still making Phenoms?

[Rio @ Jul 1st 2008 7:57PM]

AMD lags the infrastructure and huge money to invest in the very latest technologies as in like 45mm processors. I would say, AMD should diversify its chip technologies not focussing basely on core processors but it can duplex GPUs & CPUs which will be a real blow to Intel & Nvidia. I know that the work is on progress but if AMD can deliver Opteron, why not Phenom which can crack Core 2.

[CosterMonger @ Jul 2nd 2008 12:05PM]

my comment to the story was to convey that AMD already admitted to "dropping the ball" with Phenom.

and I'm thinking great, AMD now has platform but no power, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next JUMP in their designs.

Phenom is starting to sound like phlegm: every new addition is a Black Edition.

[PEZ @ Jul 1st 2008 7:06AM]

Who cares if its NOT AS FAST.. its fast, and its cheaper in nearly all cases. Not everyone is playing halo. Get bent farworthy.

[z0phi3l @ Jul 1st 2008 9:47AM]

But as has been pointed out a few times, a Q6600 is cheaper and performs slightly better than the new AMD offerings, that's just not going to cut it anymore.


I might be called an Intel fanboy BUT I really want to see AMD give Intel a good run again, it's good for the consumer. Because when I'm in the market for a processor or new PC, doesn't matter who makes it I'm looking for the biggest bang for my buck and currently Intel is it

[Chris @ Jul 1st 2008 11:50AM]

At this point, I'm not going Intel because of performance, but power consumption, this uses 140wats! While a quad core Intel (thats almost 2 years old) only uses 95wats and still matches performance!

BTW, I'm totally cool with AMD getting competitive again, at least they're doing good with ATI.

[a12ctic @ Jul 1st 2008 1:26PM]

Intel fanboys can suck it honestly. Price/Performance AMD chips are right on track for the most part. Oh and look for a good Intel chipset and then look for a good AMD chipset. The 7 series of chipsets rips anything Intel has to show at any price range. Oh, and they're cheaper.

Everyone used to spit at AMD for having mediocre chipsets, but their current offering is so much superior to Intels. If youre building anything other than a gaming rig and you want to stay in a budget its almost impossible not to buy an AMD chip.

[drunksaru @ Jul 1st 2008 11:10PM]

There is still hope for AMD. Although I am pretty much an intel fan, I talked to a few game developers as well as beta testers from adobe and they were saying that processors have gotten fast enough. Now they are focusing on utilizing the video card more than the processor and ram. Another way of looking at it is instead of letting the cpu and ram do all the work, your gpu (which could have more multicore processing capability) do most of the work and the cpu will help but the cpu will be more incharge of the main system. So Long story short, if the processor is able to communicate flawlessly with the GPU, rendering and high processing applications will run faster. AMD is with ATI, Intel wants to be with Nvidia but Nvidia says no since they feel they will make more money staying independent... (well that last part is more a guess on my part). Anyway, software developers are interested in AMD,so if they don't do anything stupid, AMD may make a comeback.

[Nathan @ Jul 2nd 2008 11:28AM]

Does it really matter how it compares to Intel's top chips? The AMD chips cost nearly half the price. Dollar to dollar, AMD is still top cpu. I can't stand paying those insane prices for Intel when it's only a slightly better cpu. Really not that much performance is lost, and I already have liquid cooling anyway so heat is not a worry for me. Oh and Intel apparently hasn't noticed that their quad 4 is fake while the AMD quad 4 cpu is true.

[Loonie @ Jul 2nd 2008 12:19PM]

I wish people wouldn't call bits of hardware 'Extreme'. It looks so pitiful a couple of years later. I'm sure kicking around somewhere I still have some SVGA PCI graphics card called "MEGA MONSTER DESTROYER OF UNIVERSES 2000" or something.

[Kax02 @ Jul 4th 2008 1:23PM]

@ loosely_coupled

Odd, maybe you should probably read around the rest of the internet then because people have shown the chips can get up to 3GHz without some magical level of meltdown. If a chip can run there, then it can run there, the BE chips establish that because you don't even need to really challenge the FSB since the multiplier is unlocked.

Like I was noting though, if the chip is running at 3GHz and really failing to deliver figures remotely challenging their competition then whats the point especially when they're already sucking up large amounts of power with the design right now at these higher clock speeds.

The 65nm Phenom is a bundle of issues really, most of those performance and power related though, I never noted that you were going to see the chips at any point, I merely noted the chip can tolerate the speed with stability. Saying that you doubt we'll see a 2.8 seems to assume I said we would. I doubt they'll do much with 65nm and merely move along with plans to ship the whole operation down to 45nm.

if 3GHz is a pipe dream then lots of people who got review samples have some amazing power to bring pipe dream stats to actual hard claims.

[razorbid.com.au @ Jul 26th 2008 4:47AM]

I own a Phenom X4 9850, I must say these chips really do suck.

I originally bought a 790X chipset board but sent it back as the chipset runs WAY too hot and I ran into problems with the phenom, bios support and 4gb kits of ram issues.

I now have a 780g chipset (both gigabyte boards these are/were). It runs good, no issues. Raid could be improved on in speed and general use.

I have my overclocked to 2.8ghz with a custom Zalman fan fitted (not meant to fit the AM2 boards).

It runs ok, bout 46'c idle, it will jump to 60-90c at full load after bout 15 mins depending on overclocking speed.

There is very little room for overclocking and it also doesn't do much. I bought DDR2 1066 ram, again not much change.

AMD lack Intel's incredible core2core interpath speed not to mention cache and also overall clock speed.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING AMD? ...... Seriously AMD winge about margins aiming for the "average" user, but in actual fact they dont have the technology to enter the gaming market. Core2Duo's run wild on AMD phenoms.

Look at the E8400 42nm version just come out from Intel, it FLYS.....

The updated quad cores from Intel also now fly....... the Q6600 was brilliant, then moving upto the newer ones weren't so good but it seem's they've fixed their little issues in the updated quads and they now run real good like the Q6600's.

Thing is, here is what AMD need to do:

1. Release CPU's at the 2.8 - 3.2Ghz marks...... triple, dual, quad nobody really cares.
2. Add a f-load of cache (eg. 4-12MB for the L3 and 1-2MB for each core).
3. Improve the FSB frequency, I know there is hypertransport and it's all effected by that but they are WAY infront of intel on design so they by now should be able to improve on this matter.
4. Offer 45 or 32nm waffer to gain performance etc.
5. Improve the core 2 core speed so they communicate faster.
6. They need to lift the restrictive nature a bit on how much of the AMD processor and cores are used for each single thing. I know it's what makes AMD snappy, quick compared to intel but look at Intel, they seriously wack wallop because they chips run full pelt at everything, AMD's dont....... they run maybe what max 55% per core at everything, even less on the new tripple and quad cores. So they need to take the stock 55% leveling to more like 70% to gain some processing grunt.
7. Reduce power consumption which will reduce heat and also allow for higher overclocking.

-=- Seriously you may think my comments are over the top but in reality AMD already have this capability and the thing is, the only reason they are lagging behind is because the company is in shambles and cant get their act together. Due to the massive losses per quarter they are also lacking the funding.

Dare I say this but AMD would do well to merge with IBM, IBM has alot of market power and money to back them up which would and could help AMD get out of this slum they are in.

I am a full AMD supporter but even I have to bow down to the almighty Intel. Despite there unhanded tacktics around the world they deliver and in the "real worl", people only look to those who deliver on what they say they will.

On an up-note.......... I think AMD's got the video cards right and should really charge more for them. AMD have done well producing the 3 series and the 4 series is even more impressive.

Cheers
Jamie

[Aaron @ Aug 2nd 2008 11:24PM]

I would just like to say tat i have a 9950 BE and i have OC'ed my chip to 3.4Ghz with no issues. I think you need to leave AMD alone. I have to admit i have never been a big fan of intel i have tried there chips and well AMD win hands down. They might be slower and chew more power but who cares perfomance is what i'm after for the best price. I would just like to draw a point made earlier look at intel's chipsets there poo AMD rule forever.