| AMD Phenom X4 9950 & 9350e |
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| Written by Jeff_Tom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 28 June 2008 20:56 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the release of the 9950 Black Edition AMD steps up from the 9850 100MHz to 2.6GHz from 2.5GHz but also increases the max TDP to 140W. The Phenom 9950 Black Edition takes over the $235 pricing the 9850 had which will be reduced to $207 starting July 7th, a helpful heads up from AMD. These will still be 9850 Black Editions for a while in the channel but they will move towards normal edition eventually but should be able to get a 9850 Black Edition for a steal in a week.
The other new processors being released are the low wattage quad core processors, the X4 9350e and 9150e which have a max TDP of 65w. Previously 95 was the lowest TDP for Phenoms and it still is for even Intel's lowest clock speed quad core processors giving AMD a 30W advantage here. This could be a boon for HTPCs, file servers, or other computers that are run 24/7. Other than that though there aren't too many changes to AMD's lineup. We should see some price cuts officially updated some time today on AMD's website but that's about it. So let's move on.
We used Asus' Crosshair II Formula 780a motherboard for overclocking using the Zero Therm NV120. Not adjusting the voltage we were able to hit 3GHz stable, a new high for Phenoms, but adjusting the voltage to 1.425v we were able to hit 3.2GHz stable and reach 3.3GHz though it blue screened in 3DMark. This was a 600MHz stable overclock, the best yet for AMD's Phenom.
Trying to overclock the low wattage 9350e didn't fair as well moving only from 2GHz to 2.34GHz despite increasing the voltage heavily.
Here's our current test system.
Our test OS was Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 with nForce driver revisions 175.19 and chipset driver revision of 18.11. V-sync was disabled for graphic tests.
For our games testing we used lower graphic settings in order to stress the processor and relieve the graphics card from being the bottleneck.
Unsurprisingly the 9950 isn't too far from the 9850 in Crysis. The Intel Q9300 comes out on top here.
UT3 shows the 9950 as a great competitor with the more expensive Intel Q9300.
Not too many shocks here in 3DMark 2006 but the 9950 does over 100 points more than the 9850.
Let's move onto to more benchmarks.
Same trends with Cinebench 10.
Again with Pov-RAY AMD just can't compete with the 9300 though it is $40 more expensive.
Good scores here overall from AMD.
Valve's benchmarks give us very similar results. Update: We re-ran some tests using Cinebench 10 as the benchmark with a Radeon HD 4870 for power consumption. Finally let's look at power consumption.
The Phenom 9350e has excellent power ratings for a quad core just barely hitting 200W on the 780a. We didn't have time to test on a 780G but it should be much lower load consumption at around 150W so for home theater PCs or other low power machines the combination of the 780G and 9350e or 9150e is unbeatable. For a 140W TDP for the 9950 it also doesn't draw too much more power.
Pricing: AMD has released official pricing, but what we see now on the net is a bit high. The Phenom X4 9950 initially comes in at $235 taking over the spot from the 9850. In a week however pricing will drop to about $205. With the Core 2 Quad Q9300 at $270 that looks like favorable pricing. With this move the 9850 will become a non Black Edition part, but AMD expects it to continue as a Black Edition for some time until later this year. The 9150E and 9350E are priced at $175 and $195 respectively. You pay the premium for the lower power consumption here. Currently we have found these CPUs below. Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition Phenom X4 9150 We were not able to dig up pricing on the 9350, but as of right now things are at first availability costs, and should come down soon. Conclusion:
Phenom 9350e Score: 95%
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 01 July 2008 09:08 |
