![]() AMD will release a 2.6GHz-clocked Phenom 9900 along with the 9700 in Q1 next year.ĪMD is a year late to the quad-core party, so its selling story will have to be about pricing, rather than performance. There is no FX-edition CPU headlining the range for enthusiast with deep pockets to tinker with. The initial processor line-up is quite telling. But AMD will be introducing tri-core variants in Q1 2008 and dual-cores in Q2 2008 - all based on the same underlying K10 architecture. The Phenom name will initially refer only to quad-core models, such as those reviewed here. The two released quad-core Phenom processors have the same architectural underpinning but the 9600 will be released with an unlocked multiplier, we were informed at last minute. Phenom 9700 will now launch in Q1 2008, we're informed, putting a significant dampener on the AMD roadmap for 2007. We can only surmise that it had significant issues in speed-binning parts at that speed and chose to run with the two lower-clocked models instead. However, at the last minute, AMD pulled the release of the Phenom 9700 for reasons that we have still to fathom. Three quad-core Phenom processors were scheduled to be launched today - the 2.0GHz-clocked Phenom 9500, 2.2GHz Phenom 9600 and 2.4GHz Phenom 9700. The important questions, then, are what speed-grades the Phenom is launching at and just how do their prices compare to Intel's? Taking the numerous performance-adding features into account, one can surmise that AMD's quad-core Phenom should perform somewhere in the vicinity of Intel Core 2 Quad processors of the same clock speed. ![]() To take advantage of these features one must use an AM2+ motherboard and that, of course, is why AMD is also releasing a new core-logic today. ![]() Users of such boards won't enjoy the benefits of DDR2-1066 compatibility, HyperTransport 3.0 or dual-plane power-switching - where processor and memory-controller are run at different voltages. The Phenom processor will ship in a regular AM2 form-factor but not all of its feature-set will be available to present AM2 motherboards. Phenom is more than two K8 processors on a single die - a number of logical and performance-enhancing features have been integrated into the quad-core design. Note, though, that Phenom features a single HyperTransport link rather than multiple links present in the server/workstation Barcelona part. ![]() The Phenom is backwards-compatible with compliant motherboards featuring HT1.0 and 2.0, of course. Adding it up, there's 14.4GiB/s for I/O-related tasks, up from the 8GB/s for K8, giving the processor a total 31.4GiB/s throughput compared to the K8's 20.8GiB/s. HT3.0 provides a 16-bit link operating at an effective 3600MHz. Note, though, that SSE4a only contains two new instructions (MOVNTSS and MOVNTSD - writing 32/64 bits directly into memory for fast stores) that aren't found in Intel's 47-instruction SSE4.1.ĪMD is implementing HyperTransport 3.0 as the conduit between processor and chipset. How does it stack up Other optimisations and pragmatismĪs one would expect, the Phenom carries over the K8's 64-bit processing but expands upon the ISA to include what it terms as SSE4a.
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