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B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around

01:20 - Wednesday 23 January 2008 by Bert Toepelt
Source: Tom's Hardware UK – Keywords: phenom, 9600, black, edition
Categories: Hardware

Table of content:
2 – B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still...
  1. 1 – AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
  2. 2 – B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around
  3. 3 – B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around (Cont'd)
  4. 4 – Phenom 9600 Black Edition
  5. 5 – Overclocking – AMD’s OverDrive Badly Supported
  6. 6 – Overclocking – Newer Versions from other Sources?
  7. 7 – Overclocking – AMD OverDrive not yet Mature
  8. 8 – Overclocking – AMD OverDrive not yet Mature (Cont’d.)
  9. 9 – Overlocking by 13.04% - 2.60 GHz
  10. 10 – Overclocking – Hitting the Limit at 2.70 GHz
  11. 11 – Overclocking – Hitting the Limit at 2.70 GHz (Cont’d.)
  12. 12 – Only 12.5% more Performance
  13. 13 – Slower than Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600
  14. 14 – Power Consumption – 21 Watts when Idle
  15. 15 – Power Consumption – 150 Watts when Overclocked
  16. 16 – Test Setup
  17. 17 – Software Configuration
  18. 18 – Benchmarks and Settings
  19. 19 – 3D-Games - UT2004, Prey
  20. 20 – 3D-Games - Quake 4, Warhammer
  21. 21 – 3D-Games -Supreme Commander, Serious Sam 2
  22. 22 – 3D-Rendering - Cinema 4D, 3D-Studio Max
  23. 23 – Applications - AVG, WinRAR
  24. 24 – Applications - Photoshop, PDF
  25. 25 – Applications - Deep Fritz
  26. 26 – Audio Encoding - iTunes, Lame
  27. 27 – Synthetic - Sandra CPU
  28. 28 – Synthetic - Sandra Memory
  29. 29 – Synthetic - Sandra Multimedia
  30. 30 – Synthetic - PC-Mark
  31. 31 – Synthetic - 3DMark06
  32. 32 – Video Encoding - Xvid, Pinnacle Studio
  33. 33 – Video Encoding - Premiere, Mainconcept
  34. 34 – Video Encoding - HDTV, DivX
  35. 35 – Video Encoding - CloneDVD
  36. 36 – Conclusion – AMD’s Phenom 9600 can’t Beat Intel’s Q6600

B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around

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In November of last year, AMD introduced the Phenom CPU its first quad-core processor. However, the chipmaker had to cancel the 2.4 GHz model, which was meant to launch as the flagship, at the very last minute due to a bug in the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB).

Due to this error, there is an increased chance that the Phenom may crash the system under very rare and unusual circumstances. This may occur when lines of code are transformed into physical addresses in the L3 cache while there is simultaneously a large amount of data traffic. To put your mind at ease, let us say at this point that this is a scenario that does not occur with normal desktop applications. Also, we didn’t encounter this phenomenon during any of our tests. Nonetheless, AMD decided to play it safe and not sell any Phenom processors running faster than 2.30 GHz.

The Phenom 9600 Black Edition continues to use this faulty B2 stepping. We can’t really understand why AMD sells this CPU specifically as an overclocker part regardless. Currently, there are three Phenom models, all of which use the B2 stepping.

 

Overview of Phenom Models
ModelSteppingAvailability
Phenom 9900 B3 June 2008
Phenom 9700 B3 April 2008
Phenom 9600 BE B2 now
Phenom 9600 B2 now
Phenom 9500 B2 now

 


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Talkback
mi1ez 23/01/2008 03:09
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mi1ez

Oh dear...
This has certainly done them no more favours...

Therlian 23/01/2008 03:31
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Therlian

This is an embarrassment for AMD. It's actually worse that they released the Black Edition of this processor because it shows that even with all the tricks, AMD is currently not even posing as competition for Intel. I don't know what AMD will be able to do to keep going; it seems like no matter what they try they are still way behind Intel.

At least when Intel was beating AMD in performance in the early days of the P2, at least AMD was still a viable option because of their price/performance ratio.

I hope they come up with something though; I don't want Intel to be the only product and raise their prices.

darthpoik 24/01/2008 11:40
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darthpoik

Poor AMD. I liked you a lot but Intel are truly kicking your butts. Hopefully this is just a Rocky feint and they will be back with a vengence soon

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