AMD - Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition

AMD's basic stab at a quad-core processor was a speck of a turkey ,  as phenom was plagued by a tlb (translation lookaside buffer) slip that required a transitority fix before the processor could be launched. though none of us were clear about the function of the tlb ,  we rapidly learnt that the hot fix for the problem cleaved 20 percent off the functioning of phenom.

This was a particular problem as the basic phenoms ran at clock speeds of 2.2ghz and 2.3ghz ,  which were too slow to compete with intel core 2 quad ,  and the tlb fix lop functioning smooth farther.

Phenom x4 is a revision of the basic phenom which fixes the tlb slip and similarly raises the clock hurry. the x4 subdivision of the mannequin patronymic is meaningful and AMD has launched a phenom x3 range ,  which is unusual as it is the world's basic tri-core processor (as far as we know; if you acknowledge better please drop us a line).

Phenom x4 is farther famous from the basic phenom by the addition of a '50' suffix to the mannequin code ,  conventionally a phenom 9500 is an basic b2 quad-core 2.2ghz processor while a phenom x4 9550 is a revised b3 2.2ghz cpu with a fixed tlb.

In addition you may earn a 2.4ghz phenom x4 9750 ,  the 2.5ghz phenom x4 9850 black edition that we're reviewing here and the top-of-the-range 2.6ghz phenom x4 9950 black edition.

The specifications of these processors are fairly telling ,  as both phenom x4 9550 and 9750 hold a tdp of 95w which is in line with earlier models of athlon 64. but the phenom x4 9850 has a tdp of 125w and the x4 9950 has a tdp of 140w.

There's another difference as the x4 9750 has a hypertransport hurry of 1.8ghz while the x4 9850 operates at 2ghz. these figures strongly suggest that AMD has pushed the architecture of this 65nm processor to its limits as the tdp is rising rapidly while the clock hurry is obviously making modest advances.

Phenom uses the same socket am2+ configuration component as the final athlon 64 processors which employed ddr2 memory and now that the bugs hold been sorted it is a decent processor. the problem is that the latest 45nm penryn core 2 processors perform better clock-for-clock and the intel processors similarly overclock significantly better than the late phenom. we've read reports of phenoms that overclock to 3ghz but were obviously capable to earn our 2.5ghz phenom x4 9850 to trot at 2.69ghz ,  which is an grow of less than ten percent.

This similarly puts AMD in something of a plight. if you lack a fast AMD processor the dual core athlon 64 x2 is motionless a decent chip. on the other hand if you're using an AMD 780g chipset in a media centre pc you won't lack a strong quad-core phenom. the upshot is that phenom falls between two stools as it has an perceivable disability to overclock significantly yet it isn't especially cheap compared to intel core 2 duo and quad.

The revised x4 phenom is a marked improvement over the basic quad-core processor but it has missing out in the hurry stakes compared to intel's processors. the likeliest market is the gamer who is dogged to trot crossfire graphics on an AMD chipset ,  but that is probably a tiny subdivision of the pc market.