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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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With it's release during the massive hardware holliday last year, the HD 3850, the least of four major cards, is easily overlooked. That's really a shame, since it's really a top-notch gaming card. Obviously, it's not the first choice for enthusiasts, but from a value perspective, it's without a doubt the best choice.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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It has been some time since we reviewed an AMD processor on Driver Heaven, but quite a lot has happened since then with the release of various CPU revisions, as well as triple core, the 780G chipset and further energy efficient Athlon models. So today it is time to catch up with the current range of AMD products starting with the Phenom 9850.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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The latest processor series from AMD is a little unusual as it makes use of not one, two, or even four cores, but rather three! That's right, the new Phenom X3 carries an unusual core configuration, and I guess the question most of you are probably asking yourselves (as we did) is why? The most reasonable explanation is that this still allows AMD to sell Phenom X4 processors with a defective core, minimizing their loss. Second, it gives some leverage for AMD to compete with Intel's dual-core processors, being able to pull the "additional core" card.
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
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We have all heard of dual and quad-core processors but three cores on a single chip? That's what AMD intends to sell with its new Phenom X3 processors, basically a quad-core X4 with a disabled core. Does this numerical advantage help AMD compete against Intel's dual-core offerings?
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When AMD sent me the triple core Phenom 8750, I was expecting to throw it in a Phenom compatible motherboard and be off to the races. Unfortunately, my experience was not quite that simple.
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When it comes to performance the AMD Phenom X3 8750 performed much faster than the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and actually beat out the AMD Phenom X4 9600 (Running the TLB Patch) in a number of benchmarks. It was also able to perform better than the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 and Core 2 Duo E6750 as seen in the benchmarks. Intel still has the lead when overclocking, but AMD hasn't been marketing the Phenom X3 series as enthusiasts parts. With that said, we still managed to get another 500MHz out of the Phenom X3 8750 by overclocking just the bus frequency...
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AMD's Phenom X3 8750 is a good processor in isolation and one that overclocks incredibly well based on our experiences. However, the sad fact is that the three Phenom cores aren't fast enough to see off the competition from Intel's higher-clocked (and sometimes cheaper) dual-core processors and the sucker punch for AMD really is the Core 2 Quad Q6600. In applications where the triple core Phenom has the potential to show its muscle, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 waltzes in and mops it up in quite spectacular fashion. It's a shame, because we were expecting the Phenom X3 8750 to be a good value proposition for the enthusiast. However, if you're looking to upgrade a current socket AM2 system, we'd recommend spending that little bit more and getting a quad-core Phenom - it's absolutely worth it.
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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From a strict performance point of view the AMD Phenom X3 8750 CPU is not going to win any awards in most cases. From a platform point of view, AMD is announcing their new "Cartwheel" platform centered on Phenom CPUs and the 780G graphics platform which has the great HD3200 class graphics. This turns the argument on its head. A Phenom 8750 with a 780G motherboard would cost around $290 today. This will give you excellent integrated graphics with full compatibility across DirectX 10 titles, with nearly the performance of the HD3400 series discrete graphics. The competition in the form of the Intel E8400+Intel G35 chipset would run you around $300. In that vein the Phenom X3 8750 CPU makes for an interesting choice for the hardware enthusiast. Do you buy a Dual Core Intel CPU with a G35 motherboard with admittedly mediocre graphics performance and no official DX10 support? Or is the better choice to buy a similarly priced Triple Core+AMD Integrated graphics solution that gives slower CPU performance but higher gaming performance across the board with full DX10 support? The choice is pretty clear to me as a reviewer, I want to game.
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AMD's tri-core Phenom X3 processor aims to fill the void between dual-core and quad-core. Does it succeed?
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While the X4 is the more costly option (though in today's world the cost of a $250 processor isn't really that expensive), AMD is going to start shipping a cheaper option based on the same K10 architecture, and yes it keeps the Phenom branding, it's a direct descendant of the X4, but with a few modifications. On the chopping block today we have the new kid on the block designed to take over where the Athlon 64 X2's price range is set. Help us welcome to the Phenom family the triple core X3. How well does it perform? Stick around while we find out!
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Today we take a look at AMD's updated Phenom CPU. Besides the slight speed bump, these B3 stepping based CPUs are now free of the "TLB Erratum" bug that AMD rightly disclosed during the launch of Phenom that causes the CPU to crash under extreme workload conditions.
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Friday, April 18, 2008
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AMD's 50-series Phenom processors, complete with B3 stepping, promise to put Phenom back on the map. Is there finally light at the end of the tunnel for AMD's now erratum-free chips?
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
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As many of you know, ATI has been particularly aggressive with their FireGL workstation graphics card lineup over the past six months. While their flagship R600-architecture was the basis for the solid (but ultimately underwhelming) Radeon HD2900XT for the gaming market, our tests have shown that this particular GPU architecture is much more competitive in the workstation market. While the R600 may not be the best choice for a high-end gaming rig, it is indeed a powerful chip for high-end OpenGL work, and as such, has led to a revival of sorts for ATI's FireGL lineup.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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When looking at the AMD Phenom 9500 under Linux, we had found this processor had posed a number of issues from kernel panics to other troubles when running Ubuntu 7.10 with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel. Once, however, upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 with the Linux 2.6.24 kernel these problems had vanished and we were pleased by this native quad-core desktop processor from AMD. Released a month prior to the first Phenom desktop CPUs were the quad-core Opteron 2300 "Barcelona" processors. We hadn't looked at any AMD Barcelona processors at that time, but today we finally have our hands on two of the new AMD Opteron 2356 server/workstation processors. The Opteron 2356 CPUs come clocked at 2.30GHz, and is a revision B3 Opteron meaning that it has a proper fix for the TLB erratum -- this model was introduced only earlier this month. We have benchmarked the new Opteron 2356 in both single and dual CPU configurations and have compared the results -- under Linux -- to two of Intel's quad-core Xeon processors.
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Monday, April 14, 2008
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In terms of performance, AMD has stated that the new B3 processors will be no faster than the original Phenom X4 CPUs without the TLB erratum fix enabled on a clock-for-clock basis. Therefore the Phenom X4 9600 and the new Phenom X4 9650, for example, should be no different in terms of performance. Just as well that should mean that today?s flagship Phenom, the X4 9850, should sit somewhere between the Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors that we reviewed earlier this year. It will be interesting to see how the 9850 stacks up against the rest of the Phenom family and of course, Intel's Q6600.
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