AMD B3 Phenom X4 9850 benchmarked Part1

AMD Phenom is back with not 1, not 2, not 3, but 7 fresh from the oven models. The infamous TLB bug gone, and the B3s are renamed as 9x50. In this extract of the article from Anandtech, we shall see how they perform against Intel's offerings as well as their B2 siblings.

	Cores	Stepping	Clock Speed	TDP	L2 Cache	L3 Cache	1 Ku Price
AMD Phenom X4 9850	4	B3	2.5GHz	125W	2MB	2MB	$235
AMD Phenom X4 9750	4	B3	2.4GHz	125W	2MB	2MB	$215
AMD Phenom X4 9750*	4	B3	2.4GHz	95W	2MB	2MB	$???
AMD Phenom X4 9650*	4	B3	2.3GHz	95W	2MB	2MB	$???
AMD Phenom X4 9550	4	B3	2.2GHz	95W	2MB	2MB	$195
AMD Phenom X4 9100e*	4	B2	1.8GHz	65W	2MB	2MB	~$200
AMD Phenom X3 8600*	3	B2	2.3GHz	95W	1.5MB	2MB	~$175
AMD Phenom X3 8400*	3	B2	2.1GHz	95W	1.5MB	2MB	~$150

*OEM only

Phenom X4 9850



The 9850, being the top of the line B3 Phenoms, is a "Black Edition" part, meaning it has an unlocked multiplier. It is also the first AMD processor to have its L3/Northbridge/Memory Controller running at 2.0Ghz.



Overclocking:



Overclocking wise, it was slightly better than any previous attempts, it managed to stabilize @ 2.8Ghz with a voltage boost.



Performance Impact of the TLB Bug

	SYSMark 2007	DivX	CineBench R10	3dsmax 9	WinRAR
AMD Phenom 9600 (B2 Stepping) - TLB Fix Disabled	117	74.3 fps	7396	7.20	1348 KB/s
AMD Phenom 9600 (B2 Stepping) - TLB Fix Enabled	105	72.0 fps	7031	6.47	367 KB/s
Performance Impact	-10.3%	-3.1%	-4.9%	-10.1%	-72.8%

As you can see, there are loss in performance in all areas. Running Winrar with the TBL fix enabled is as good as disabling 3 out of the 4 cores.




Test Platform

CPU:	AMD Phenom 9850 (2.5GHz) AMD Phenom 9750 (2.4GHz) AMD Phenom 9550 (2.2GHz) AMD Phenom 9600 (2.3GHz) AMD Phenom 9500 (2.2GHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.50GHz/1333MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz/1066MHz) Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (2.66GHz/1333MHz) Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz/1333MHz)
Motherboard:	ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (X38) MSI K9A2 Platinum (790FX)
Chipset Drivers:	Intel 8.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.3
Hard Disk:	Western Digital Raptor 150GB
Memory:	Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20 (1GB x 2)
Video Card:	eVGA GeForce 8800 GT SSC
Video Drivers:	NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25
Desktop Resolution:	1920 x 1200
OS:	Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit

Next Page

Part 1: Introduction, Overclocking & Test Platform
Part 2: Benchmarks
Part 3: Gaming & Power Consumption