Source: Tom's Hardware UK – Keywords: Phenom_9700, Spider_Platform, 790FX
Categories: Hardware
Overclocking - Still an Engineering Sample?
At the pre-launch press event in Warsaw, AMD gave the tech journalists a chance to work with and benchmark an AMD Phenom system for an entire day. In all, the company provided 42 identical systems. Two incidents stuck out during our testing.
During the briefing, AMD informed us that we were allowed to overclock the systems – under the proviso that we didn’t raise the processor’s core voltage. During the benchmarking itself, we were accompanied by specialists of AMD USA that answered any questions had regarding the specifications of the test systems.
The other novelty for us was the fact that even the BIOS didn’t display a product designation for the processor. Back in our lab we tried to uncover some more details. While we were able to read the CPU’s internal designation using the CPUID command, all this served to prove was that the processor’s name was indeed AMD Engineering Sample.
In all of the years we’ve been conducting processor tests we have never received an unnamed processor from AMD; even Intel’s confidential engineering samples always come with a product name or designator. At any rate, we wish to emphasize once more that our sample CPU was completely stable throughout our testing and did not cause any problems, even when we overclocked it.
- Previous page Phenom Caught a Processor Bug -...
- Next page Phenom Fits in every Socket
- AMD Radeon HD 3800: The Empire Strikes Back
- BIOS Flash - Overclock Your Graphics Card in 5 Minutes
- Six Graphics Cards with Luxury Trimmings
- Workstation-Shootout: ATi FireGL V7600 vs. Nvidia Quadro FX 4600
- AMD HD 3800 To Support DX 10.1
- Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT Reviewed
- DirectX 10 Shootout: Geforce 8x00 vs. Radeon 2x00
- DirectX 10 Cards on a Budget
- The Best Gaming Graphics Cards For Your Money: October 2007
- Can Integrated Graphics Cut It For Gaming Or HTPC?
I'd rather have a slower processor but not have to rebuy the 3 of the most expensive components (CPU, mobo, and RAM) every time I want to upgrade something. That's why I've stuck with AMD for the last few years. Can't wait to drop a couple of Phenom FXs in to my 4x4 platform and have 8 processing cores.
What is going to happen when AMD shortly moves to 45nm processors with DDR3 memory controllers?
unless AMD are going to put both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers on their 45nm processors or make them in both DDR2 and DDR3 versions then you will have to change you're ram, motherboard and processor to go 45nm.(that didn't happen with intel)
Unless motherboard makers put both DDR2 and DDR3 slots on current boards although the latter wouldn't be supported until 45nm come in.(can't see that happening though).
I think these chips have more to come, thats an engineering sample and the mainboards got a chipset with undeveloped drivers.
I say give it a month for the nvidia chipset....... and retest.
I can see why they need 4x Crossfire boards given the lack luster performance of the new ATI cards... ATI seem to be struggling since their Cope-de-grace with the X19xx series...
AMD clearly has a good design (architecture) but the process technology is their achilles heal. They need 4Mb+ L3 cache, high K transistor process, and 45nm like yesterday!!
As a bit of an AMD fanboy (I'm on a dual Opteron rig just now) I hate to see whats happening to them now!!
Bob
P.S. But it will be better
Overall, I like the way AMD has gone for compatibility and performance. The price is phenomenal and the ease of implementation will ensure downtime during upgrades is kept to a minimum. It's easy to under-estimate just how hard that is to pull off.