Today we're looking at the Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition processor from AMD specifically. That's right again we're seeing a few name modifications from AMD. The "X" is back designating the number of cores as Phenom now is released in a triple core version officially as well. Currently these are OEM only versions and not for the channel, the X3 Phenom 8600 and 8400 at 2.3 and 2.1GHz. They should be around $175 to $150 in thousand unit prices. They also are the "B2" revision of the processors and do not have the TLB fix already applied, which shouldn't be as much a problem for OEMs than end users.  AMD does plan to launch triple core "B3" revisions of Phenom but not to the channel just yet but shouldn't be too far off due sometime in the next month. Today these B3 revision Phenoms are launching in with the Phenom 9550, 9650, 9750, and 9850 Black Edition. The high-end 9850 is the only B3 Black Edition at this party and only available as a Black Edition. Luckily pricing also isn't too far from the current "B2" Phenoms with the 9550 due for $195 and the highest-end 9850 Black Edition for $235.

AMD is also launching a lower power Phenom the X4 9100e running at 1.8GHz and with a TDP rating of 65W. That also though isn't due for the channel but something we should be seeing in a month or so. As always we'll keep you updated. $50 or so should be the price between a triple core and a quad core processor.

The 9850 we're looking at runs at 2.5GHz, has a TDP of 125W, 2MB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 and should sell for $235 in thousand unit quantities. As with other Black Editions if features an unlocked multiplier and also it boasts a new 2GHz Hypertransport speed, above the 1.8GHz of other Phenoms. As soon as it is available at e-tailers we'll let you know.

Back to the TLB fix the new 9x50 or 8x50 Phenoms contain a chip level fix for the TLB errata. No more disabling or enabling the fix in the BIOS, worrying about performance loss or crashes or anything of the sort. Although we never ran across the problem our selves and don't know of any in the enthusiast community who encountered or could repeat the error it is definitely good that AMD have at last addressed this in the hardware and it is currently a non-issue so they can turn their attention towards ramping the clockspeed and hopefully 45nm. This alone makes it much easier to recommend Phenoms for everyone rather than something with the potential for either performance loss or crashes however slight the chance.

Here are the 9850 tech specs.

AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor TECH SPECS:

Processor Frequency: 2.5GHz

L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)

L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)

L3 Cache Size: 2MB

Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller *

Memory Controller Speed: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management

Types of Memory Supported: Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz)

HyperTransport 3.0: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)

Total Processor Bandwidth: Up to 33.1 GB/s bandwidth

Packaging: Socket AM2+ 940-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)

Fab location: AMD's Fab 36 wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany

Process Technology: 65-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology

Approximate Transistor count: ~ 450 million (65nm)

Approximate Die Size: 285 mm2 (65nm)

Max Ambient Case Temp: 61o Celsius

Nominal Voltage: 1.2-1.3 Volts

Max TDP: 125 Watts

Overclocking the processor we adjusted the Northbridge and were able to reach a stable overclock of 2.83GHz which resulted in a few extra frames per second and some time saved in our benchmarks. Not an amazing overclcock for but for a quad core processor fairly decent.

Here's our current test system.

Our test OA was Windows Vista Home with the ATI Catalyst 7.3 drivers and Nvidia's 174.53 of Forceware drivers. All the latest software revisions were used in our testing.

Note: While we tried to disable the TLB patch in BIOS we were unable to do so and relied on AMD Overdrive's Turbo feature to disable and enable the TLB patch. "Green" being enabled and "Red" being disabled. We have some questions about the results though as more often than not we saw little changes between the two and occasionally the opposite of what we were expecting with the "Green" in theory TLB enabled patch doing much better in Valve's particle benchmark. PC Mark though gave us results along the line of which we'd see with the performance hit from TLB patch enabled.

For our games testing we used lower graphic settings in order to stress the processor and relieve the graphics card from being the bottleneck.

We ran through this test to verify it multiple times and here we see Crysis with the Phenom 9850BE blows away the 9600. The TLB error seems to be strong here and also the Phenom benefits tremendously by the higher clock speed.

Unreal Tournament 3 again shows huge gains by over 50fps here at these lower graphic settings. Unreal Tournament 3 is one of the few games on the market to use all four processor cores so we believe it an important test.

Futuremark's synthetic benchmark 3DMark 2006 SE shows somewhat smaller gains than we were expecting but the 9850 easily bests the previous top rated Phenom.

Let's move onto to more benchmarks.

Cinebench 10 doesn't see quite as drastic a performance increase as we saw in the games but still a nice way to shave down the seconds when rendering images.

Pov Ray renderer uses all cores available and the Phenom 9850 again takes down the 9600 cores easily.

PCMark 05 is a benchmark which tests general day to day use such as zipping, browsing the web, office programs, hard drive start up times, etc and gives us a clear indication of how much the TLB fix could hurt performance. Luckily though for AMD that is a thing of the past.

Valve's Map Compilation benchmark shows the time it takes to build an entire map which can be quite time exhausting for some developers. Here with the 9850 we're able to do so in just under three minutes.

Valve's particle gives an overall score with the CPU's ability to render thousands of different particles and is very multi-threaded and should be implemented more and more in future Source revisions. Here we saw an unusual but repeatable discrepancy which we repeated between the 9600 with AMD Overdrive Turbo on and off but the 9850 BE is definitely the winner.

Finally let's look at power consumption.