Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > CPU > AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition – A New Hope?

AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition – A New Hope?

01:20 - Wednesday 23 January 2008 by Bert Toepelt

1. AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
2. B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around
3. B2 Stepping – TLB Bug is Still Around (Cont'd)
4. Phenom 9600 Black Edition
5. Overclocking – AMD’s OverDrive Badly Supported
6. Overclocking – Newer Versions from other Sources?
7. Overclocking – AMD OverDrive not yet Mature
8. Overclocking – AMD OverDrive not yet Mature (Cont’d.)
9. Overlocking by 13.04% - 2.60 GHz
10. Overclocking – Hitting the Limit at 2.70 GHz
11. Overclocking – Hitting the Limit at 2.70 GHz (Cont’d.)
12. Only 12.5% more Performance
13. Slower than Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600
14. Power Consumption – 21 Watts when Idle
15. Power Consumption – 150 Watts when Overclocked
16. Test Setup
17. Software Configuration
18. Benchmarks and Settings

19. 3D-Games - UT2004, Prey
20. 3D-Games - Quake 4, Warhammer
21. 3D-Games -Supreme Commander, Serious Sam 2
22. 3D-Rendering - Cinema 4D, 3D-Studio Max
23. Applications - AVG, WinRAR
24. Applications - Photoshop, PDF
25. Applications - Deep Fritz
26. Audio Encoding - iTunes, Lame
27. Synthetic - Sandra CPU
28. Synthetic - Sandra Memory
29. Synthetic - Sandra Multimedia
30. Synthetic - PC-Mark
31. Synthetic - 3DMark06
32. Video Encoding - Xvid, Pinnacle Studio
33. Video Encoding - Premiere, Mainconcept
34. Video Encoding - HDTV, DivX
35. Video Encoding - CloneDVD
36. Conclusion – AMD’s Phenom 9600 can’t Beat Intel’s Q6600

Phenom 9600 BlackEdition

AMD fans that want to overclock their processor can rejoice, as the CPU maker is offering a Black Edition of its current fastest quad-core model. The Black Edition turns the Phenom into a much more attractive CPU for many prospective buyers.

How much overclocking potential does the Black Edition really offer and can the AMD OverDrive tool really deliver on its promise of easy and painless overclocking?

Thanks to the unlocked multiplier on the Black Edition, AMD’s OverDrive overclocking utility can finally be used more sensibly, allowing users to test the limits of their CPU within Windows without needing to reboot for every hanged setting. The unlocked multiplier lets you overclock the CPU without having to raise the motherboard’s FSB or Hypertransport speed. Thus, the board does not have to operate outside of its specifications and remains stable.

The toughest competition in computer stores for AMD’s Phenom processor is Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600. Costing about €210, it’s almost identical in price to the Phenom 9600 Black Edition. Thus a good value for money will be decided by the two CPUs’ respective power consumption and their performance.

Phenom 9600 BlackEdition

We overclocked the Phenom 9600 Black Edition to its stable limits and then ran it through our entire benchmark course. It seems like a contradiction that AMD allows buyers to overclock this model to their heart’s content even though it still uses the faulty B2 stepping. After all, AMD decided to delay all processor models running at more than 2.3 GHz due to the TLB bug in this very same stepping. Does this mean that Phenom overclockers are at a higher risk of having their systems become unstable?