Testbed and Methods
In conclusion to our Phenom 9600 Black Edition study we should discuss performance test results. This quad-core processor selling officially for $251 will be competing in out test session against quad-core Intel CPUs from the same price range. It is first of all Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 priced at $266.
Besides, we also decided to add the results for the upcoming Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor from the Penryn family. It is not selling yet, but it has been already announced and should appear in the market within this quarter already. It should be priced at about the same level as Core 2 Quad Q6600.
And of course, we also included the results of the Phenom 9600 Black Edition processor overclocked to 2.6GHz.
During our investigation of Phenom 9600 Black Edition performance we decided to also check out the negative effect of the TLB-patch. That is why you can see two results for Phenom 9600 CPU on the performance charts: with and without the patch. The overclocked processor was tested only with the disabled TLB-patch, because it doesn't make much sense for desktop systems and the negative effect it has on the performance is noticeable enough.
Here is the detailed description of our test platforms configuration:
AMD platform:
- CPU: AMD Phenom 9600 (Socket AM2+, 2.3GHz, 4 x 512MB L2, 2MB L3, Agena).
- Mainboard: DFI LANParty UT 790FX-M2R (Socket AM2+, AMD 790FX).
- Memory: 2GB DDR2-1066 with 5-5-5-15-2T timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
- Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
- HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
- OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.
Intel platform:
- CPUs:
- Intel Core 2 Duo Q9300 (LGA775, 2,5GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 2 x 3MB L2, Yorkfield);
- Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 (LGA775, 2.4GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 2 x 4MB L2, Kentsfield).
- Mainboard: ASUS P5E (LGA775, Intel X38, DDR2 SDRAM).
- Memory: 2GB DDR2-1066 with 5-5-5-15 timings (Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF).
- Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI-E x16).
- HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
- OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.
