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AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition Review March 16, 2008 Chris Crazipper Angelini |
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Summary: With street prices hovering in the $250 range, AMD's Phenom 9600 Black Edition is priced aggressively. But how well does the CPU overclock, and what kind of gaming performance should you expect? Join us, as we take a detailed look at OC'ing the processor with AMD Overdrive!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 12 ) |
That was four months ago. Since then, AMD has slowly ramped up production on the Phenom. And while the company has yet to unveil a new model of its quad-core darling, it did recently let loose a “Black Edition” of the flagship Phenom 9600 running at 2.3 GHz with an unlocked clock multiplier. The word over at AMD is that we’ll see new speed bins of the Phenom soon, along with a fresh spin of the silicon that fixes the errata number 298—the TLB issue said to plague all of AMD’s quad-core chips.
Until then, the principal competition to Intel’s line of desktop CPUs remains the AMD Phenom at either 2.2 GHz or 2.3 GHz. If you’re an enthusiast with aspirations of adding value through overclocking, that Phenom 9600 Black Edition is probably your best bet. Now, I know what you’re thinking. The Phenom hasn’t even been out six months yet and it already has a reputation as a mediocre overclocker. Why would an enthusiast choose this chip for his gaming platform?
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There are a couple of reasons, actually. First, you have the 790FX chipset, loaded with advanced functionality and the latest performance features. Then you have price—one of AMD’s only defenses against Intel’s superior performance position. The Black Edition Phenom sells for $251. Though there are certainly faster Intel offerings, they’re also priced to reflect that fact. An enthusiast chip with an unlocked clock multiplier is unheard of at such low cost.
OverDrive: Yet Another Reason
The Phenom 9600 Black Edition’s story gets even better when you add AMD’s OverDrive utility to it. Once upon a time, OverDrive was used to milk ATI’s graphics processors of extra performance. Today, the app gives power users the option of tweaking platform settings from within Windows. Gamers who might have otherwise avoided tooling around in their BIOSes can now alter performance from the perceived safety of an operating system.
Could this be the end of BIOS-based tweaking? In Brandon’s Phenom preview, he gave us a nice hard look at AMD’s polished user interface, which is unquestionably easier to look at than any of the BIOS screens I’ve seen. Personally, I’d be much more comfortable pulling bars from one side of a GUI to the other than manually keying in settings I hoped would take.
Right from the get-go, though, my expectations were tempered by representatives at AMD who warned that the Black Edition chip probably wouldn’t go much further than a couple hundred megahertz beyond its stock 2.3 GHz. Fair enough. I had a new CPU in-hand, a very sexy motherboard from Gigabyte with a great looking BIOS, and AMD’s OverDrive utility for the sake of comparison. I was on a mission to dig deep into the chip’s architecture, take preliminary performance numbers, and then try to determine if AMD’s beta software tool had the chops to push overclocking into the realm of Windows.
| Inside The Phenom | Page:: ( 2 / 12 ) |
Quad-Core Dissected
AMD knows what victory tastes like. The original Athlon launch saw Intel scrambling for a foothold and the Athlon 64 unveiling reaffirmed the green team’s dominance. However, Intel proved that it wasn’t the type of company to be held down when it showed off its Core micro-architecture—a design with roots in the mobile world and then polished for the desktop and enterprise spaces.
Ever since then, it has been AMD on the defensive. With Phenom, the company looked like it was going for Intel’s jugular. Built on a 65nm manufacturing process, AMD finessed four processing cores onto a single die, yielding what AMD likes to call native quad-core. In contrast, Intel’s quad-core chips leverage a pair of dual-core processors sharing real estate on the same package. According to AMD, its native approach gives you the benefit of communication between cores at full die speeds. The lingering question, of course, is whether or not a native quad-core design can save the day when scaling issues are hampering headroom.
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Each of the four cores comprising a Phenom processor has its own 128KB L1 cache and its own 512KB L2 cache. The four L2s empty out in a shared 2MB L3 repository responsible for holding data that gets flushed from L2 and might need to be used later. All of that cache, together with the processor’s quadrupled execution resources, gives the chip a transistor count in excess of 460 million.
While much of that complexity is attributable to cache memory, AMD has also made significant improvements to the processing cores themselves in order to help bolster performance. For instance, the engine responsible for handling SSE operations is now 128 bits wide instead of 64 bits, so now all SSE operations are executed in a single cycle. Similarly, instructing fetching increases from 16 bytes per cycle to 32 bytes. And data moves faster in and out of the L2 cache thanks to more bandwidth between cache and the northbridge.
All of AMD’s chips already enjoy a significant advantage when it comes to communicating with RAM. An integrated memory controller goes a long way to help minimize latency. Phenom’s memory controller is revamped to further speed up data transfers. Instead of the dual-channel, 128 bit controller the K8 architecture employed, Phenom splits the logic into a pair of 64-bit controllers operating more efficiently. When you look at the boot screen of your Phenom-based platform and wonder why it’s reporting 2GB of memory at 64-bits when you clearly dropped your 1GB modules into separate channels that should total 128, remember that the modules are running in a dual, unganged 64-bit arrangement. Don’t worry—that configuration is the one you’ll want to use for the best possible performance. On top of offering more granularity, Phenom’s memory controller also incorporates support for frequencies up to 1066 MHz.
The Phenom drops into a brand new socket interface that isn’t all that new after all. Socket AM2+ is pin-compatible with the AM2 interface already in use. It adds support for a HyperTransport 3.0 interface between the CPU and northbridge, pumping up frequency from 1 GHz DDR to 1.8 GHz DDR. The resulting boost to bandwidth helps enable the PCI Express 2.0 links you’ll find on most Phenom-based platforms. You can drop a Phenom chip into an older AM2 board (with a new BIOS, of course), but you won’t get those HyperTransport 3.0 link speeds. You can also drop an AM2 processor into an AM2+-equipped motherboard to the same effect. Optimally, though, you’d pair AM2+ chip to AM2+ motherboard. For our purposes today, we’re using AMD’s 790FX chipset, the flagship of the company’s core logic lineup.
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Notice that AMD is swinging at Intel with a 65nm process when Intel’s already enjoying the fruits of a 45nm process. How is it possible for the Phenom to compete given an inherent disadvantage like that? Interestingly enough, each of a Phenom processor’s four cores is able to operate using independent clock speeds and voltages, continually optimizing for the load you’re putting on the chip. AMD tags the Phenom 9600 Black Edition with a 95W TDP, less than Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600—closest to the Phenom in terms of price.
Of course, we all know that tech specs and architecture are great for coming up with theoretical guesstimates of how a given chip should perform or compare against its competition. The rubber meets the road when you get down and dirty with the hardware in real-world benchmarks.
| OverDrive In Depth | Page:: ( 3 / 12 ) |
OverDrive In Depth
If you’ve been overclocking for long enough, then you probably remember when ABIT changed the industry with software-based BIOS tweaks. Before that, changing voltages, clock multipliers, and bus speeds meant keying in a combination of DIP switches or rearranging jumpers. The BIOS has dutifully served us well as a foundation for milking extra performance from our hardware ever since.
AMD is changing the game with OverDrive, though. The BIOS, which many mainstream gamers are likely to avoid so long as their systems are running smoothly, is seeing its heyday threatened by AMD’s Windows-based utility. Not only does OverDrive give you complete control of clock settings and voltage, but it’ll also try to peg the best possible overclock automatically if you’re uncomfortable calling the shots. Could this be a replacement for the long-revered BIOS-based adjustments?
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The first time you fire up into OverDrive, you’ll find yourself in Novice mode looking at a summary screen with information about your CPU, memory, cache, and HyperTransport link. Click one screen over to the Status Monitor and you’re treated to a read out of the speed, voltage, and temperature of the Phenom’s four cores. GPU and board-level frequencies are also reported.
Shift over one more tab for a first taste of Windows-based performance modification. In Novice mode, you have a slider numbered from 1 to 10 corresponding to more aggressive overclocks. A Detailed Settings screen underneath lets you know exactly what changes were made. Three sub-menus provide options to Benchmark your tweaks, run a Stability Test, and Auto Clock the platform. Hit the Start button under that Auto Clock menu and OverDrive starts incrementally increasing the reference clock until the system fails its stability test. Talk about an easy way to crank out extra speed, even if you don’t have an intimate familiarity with overclocking.
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The last menu screen, Preference, gives you the option to switch over into Advanced mode. Flip back to the Performance Control window, now populated by a very granular Clock/Voltage sub-menu. Here’s where the veteran hardware enthusiast can work his magic. An array of sliders lets you tune every frequency imaginable and seven different voltages. A Memory tab facilitates complete control over the timing of your modules. And of course, the Benchmark and Stability Test menus let you put those tweaks to task.
| OverDrive’s Results and System Setup | Page:: ( 4 / 12 ) |
Overclocking
Right off the bat I went with OverDrive’s Auto Clock feature, which incrementally increases the board’s reference clock to the point of instability, then backs down to the last known successful frequency. The strategy is hardly dynamic—I didn’t see any voltage increases or multiplier tweaks (the whole point of buying a Black Edition processor). Nevertheless, OverDrive settled on a 210 MHz HT clock, yielding a 2415 MHz CPU frequency. As a very blunt tool for pounding out free megahertz, Auto Clock does its job.
I was looking for something a little more elegant, though. After switching into the Advanced mode, I started by bumping the Phenom 9600 up to a 12.5x multiplier, up from 11.5x. I gave the chip an extra .1V of juice and proceeded to run OverDrive’s built-in stability test. So far, so good at 2.5 GHz. Then I bumped the reference HT clock up 5 MHz, targeting a 2.56 GHz CPU clock. Immediately, the machine locked up. Oops. Perhaps that was a little much.
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I went back and dropped the multiplier to 12x and sought a bit more horsepower from the HyperTransport interface, bumping the reference clock to 208 MHz. Again, I was looking at a 2.5 GHz CPU clock. Now the system also had extra speed from the memory, northbridge, and HyperTransport 3.0 connection, too.
Just to make sure the OverDrive settings were good to go, I applied the settings and restarted the test bed. OverDrive loaded back up and—what’s this? My adjustments had all reset? Ah ha; OverDrive Assist hadn’t yet been enabled. If you want your overclocked settings to be applied automatically, you’ll need to have that feature turned on.
Once it came time to start running benchmarks, the OverDrive-enabled configuration proved unstable, failing to consistently load the clock multiplier settings I had chosen and freezing up upon launching certain tests. Back to the BIOS I went, manually configuring the settings to match what I knew worked. In the end, I decided to stick with a 12.5x clock multiplier and stock HT setting. Interestingly enough, even with a pair of DDR2-1066 modules running at pre-configured SPD settings and pumped up with an extra .5V, I couldn’t get the platform stable using a 5.33x memory multiplier. The results were much better at DDR2-800 frequencies and more aggressive timings. Looks like the BIOS is still your go-to once you’ve figured out the best possible combination of settings with OverDrive.
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Don’t think that OverDrive will save you from ever digging into your board’s BIOS, even if you do use it as a primary overclocking platform. The Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 board we used for testing came loaded with software features, including a switch for disabling the TLB erratum, Cool’n’Quiet control, and a virtualization toggle. The board’s MB Intelligent Tweaker screen gives you control over the same knobs and levers as OverDrive, so if you’d rather overclock that way, there’s no shame in going old school. Not all AM2+ boards are going to be as enthusiast-friendly, though. Should you find yourself constrained by your vendor’s choice in BIOS settings, OverDrive is a real savior.
For what it’s worth, it may turn out that some motherboard vendors don’t give you an option to turn off that TLB erratum workaround, since it can cause stability issues under heavy load, according to AMD. If you find yourself on a system without the option to disable the patch, simply head into OverDrive and click the little green button in the upper right-hand corner of the utility. Based on our experiences with the Gigabyte board and its BIOS toggle, when the patch is enabled (thereby hammering performance), that button is green. When it’s yellow or red, the patch is off. Tech Report’s Scott Wasson reports that when the button is red, there’s also a CPU-based power management option being disabled to further enhance performance.
System Setup
AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition (2.3 GHz)
AMD Phenom 9500 (2.2 GHz)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4 GHz)
Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 Motherboard
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI Motherboard
2GB OCZ Technology DDR2-1066 CAS5 Memory (2x1GB)
Gigabyte GV-RX387512H Radeon HD 3870 512MB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA 3 Gbps Hard Drive
Windows Vista x32, current as of March 13th, 2008 with Windows Update
DirectX 10
Desktop resolution 1600x1200, 32-bit color, 85Hz refresh
We disable Vista’s UAC and generate an image using Norton Ghost 11 to create the same basic benchmark platform for each test bed. The image is frozen with the latest Windows Updates and deployed to each system. The appropriate drivers are then loaded to the machines.
Benchmarks
3DMark06
Unreal Tournament III
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Company of Heroes
Call of Duty 4
| 3DMark06 | Page:: ( 5 / 12 ) |
3DMark06
Notes
We chose Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 because it sells at roughly the same price as AMD’s Phenom 9600 running at 2.3 GHz. The Q6600 isn’t even at the top of Intel’s performance lineup. If you want faster and have the money, there’s the Q6700 and any number of different Extreme Edition chips ready to deliver.
You won’t need those pricier models, though, because at least in Futuremark’s synthetic gaming benchmark, the Q6600 comes out on top of even our Phenom 9600 Black Edition overclocked to 2.5 GHz. Both tests—the 3D suite and processor metric—demonstrate Intel in the lead, despite AMD’s architectural slam dunks.
AMD could really use faster core clocks here. The Phenom 9600 would also show much better with 1066 MHz memory, but as mentioned, no amount of CAS cranking or voltage tweaking would get our 790FX board stable with that 5.33x multiplier.
| Unreal Tournament III | Page:: ( 6 / 12 ) |
Unreal Tournament III
Notes
We used the botmatch technique for benchmarking Unreal Tournament, populating our map with 24 characters, 12 to a side. Until you get up to 1600x1200, the test is decidedly CPU limited—and even at the higher resolution, Intel’s advantage suggests that graphics horsepower is being taxed nearly as much as processing muscle. This one’s another definitive win for the Core 2 Quad Q6600.
| Lost Planet | Page:: ( 7 / 12 ) |
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
I have a big problem with bugs (the many-legged type), so Lost Planet isn’t exactly my cup of tea. But the game most definitely shows that we need more graphics horsepower if there’s any hope for diversity in our results. As the tests stand, consistency throughout proves that there’s plenty of room left for our processors to stretch their figurative legs.
| Half-Life 2 | Page:: ( 8 / 12 ) |
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Notes
Older though it may be, Half Life 2: Episode 2 is still popular and it still looks great. The 800x600 tests are really just here for show—nobody is going to play this game at that resolution using modern hardware. But you can see Intel’s advantage in the processor-bound scenario. That lead even carries over to 1280x1024. But once you turn the resolution up to 1600x1200 and crank up the eye candy, Half-Life 2 proves that it’s a graphics bound game at playable settings. You can’t go wrong with any of these CPUs.
| Company of Heroes | Page:: ( 9 / 12 ) |
Company of Heroes
Notes
We expected this WWII RTS to show off what a speedy processor can do for gaming performance, but there’s not a lot of variance to see here. Intel establishes a reasonable advantage at 800x600. However, the game really doesn’t look good down there. You’ll want to run at least 1280x1024. Even then, though, pushing up to 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing is reasonable with a Radeon HD 3870. At that resolution, the CPUs deliver similar experiences.
| Call of Duty 4 | Page:: ( 10 / 12 ) |
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
This one’s clearly limited by our graphics card at every resolution, though Intel does maintain a small lead all the way through 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing applied to the metric.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 11 / 12 ) |
Pros:
OverDrive: Perhaps the brightest beacon on the Phenom’s horizon right now is AMD’s OverDrive utility. The app isn’t perfect, and even with the OverDrive Assist agent running we weren’t always able to recover our overclocked settings. But for the veteran overclocker looking for a well thought-out interface or the rookie who wants to click one button and let the software do the rest, AMD is onto something.
790FX: AMD’s high-end platform complements the Phenom extremely well. From full support for the processor’s HyperTransport 3.0 link to copious PCI Express 2.0 connectivity, the 790FX is really a great package. Long-time fans of Intel’s platform message now have an alternative in the 790FX/Phenom/Radeon HD combination.
Unlocked Multiplier: If you take a look at AMD’s pricing schedule, you’ll see that it’s offering the Phenom 9600 Black Edition at the same price as its Phenom 9600. These chips seem to consistently be good for 100-200 MHz overclocks, and it’s incredibly easy to bump the multiplier up a couple of notches for that free performance versus tweaking the HT reference clock.
Cons:
Relative Performance: If there’s one thing we see over and over again, it’s that games rarely reflect processing horsepower as you hit the big resolutions with the details cranked way up. At the same time, Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 held its own against the 9600 Black Edition. The difference is that the Phenom is AMD’s fastest desktop chip, while Intel has several other options for enthusiasts willing to spend more money.
Scalability: An unlocked multiplier is good if it opens the door to a couple hundred extra megahertz worth of headroom. It’s even better if it sets new precedents for overclocking. There have been those CPUs that go down as history as remarkable values for the enthusiasts able to get their hands on them. The Phenom 9600 Black Edition is not one of those chips. Ours topped out at 2.5 GHz. Anything else and Windows wouldn’t boot.
TLB Erratum: The TLB erratum plaguing revision B2 chips means that, under heavy utilization, they have a remote chance of crashing. To reiterate, you’re not going to peg your Phenom at 100% load and watch it crater. In fact, we’ve still yet to trigger a crash here in our labs. But when the issue is patched through an updated BIOS, it has massive implications for performance. Fortunately, we’re expecting the B3 any day now, and that might be reason enough to hold off on a Phenom processor today.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 12 / 12 ) |
AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition