AMD Phenom X4 9150e & 9350e Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Test Setup

In this article, we'll be paying close attention to the processors retailing around the same ballpark as the new Phenom X4 energy efficient processors. Officially, AMD has the most affordable quad-core processors at below the US$200 mark, but Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 has been in retail online for US$199 at the point of review (even though Intel's recommended list price is much higher). So the Core 2 Quad Q6600, as well as the Core 2 Duo E8400 and E8200 models will be thrown in the comparison as well to see how they handle. AMD's contingent will be represented by the Phenom X4 9650, 9550 and the Phenom X3 8750 processors - all of which are priced below US$200 too.

The important thing here is that AMD is knowingly pricing their energy efficient processors at the same price point as their better performing parts that have a 95W TDP. So you'll really have to be biting their power savings angle to appreciate and invest in these new lower clocked processors. More interestingly, how would the aging Intel Q6600 part hold up against these new 65W TDP rated Phenom processors, as well as the newer Intel E8000 series Core 2 Duo processors of the same power rating? That's what this comparison would be about.

Note the specs of the Phenom X4 9350e processor.

When AMD's power savings feature kicked in, Cool 'n' Quiet, we noted the much lower 1GHz idle clock speed and sub-1V operation.

We had some issues with the AMD testbed configuration running the memory at DDR2-1066 although it is supported by the processor. However, we've found that the latest motherboard BIOS is able to run the memory at DDR2-1066 - albeit a bit flaky. As such, we've kept all our testing at DDR2-800 and that went smooth.

With that said, the following testbed configurations will be used throughout our comprehensive benchmarking segment:-

AMD Phenom Testbed Configuration

ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe Wi-Fi (AMD 790FX chipset)
AMD Phenom X4 9650, 9550, 9350e and 9150e
AMD Phenom X3 8750
2 x 1GB Aeneon DDR2-1066 memory modules @ DDR2-800 (CAS 5. 5-5-15)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
ASUS GeForce 8800 GT 512MB - with NVIDIA ForceWare 169.21
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Intel Core 2 Quad/Duo Test Configuration

ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38 Express chipset)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Duo E8400 and E8200
2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 memory modules (CAS 7. 7-7-20)
2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 memory modules @ DDR3-1066 (CAS 7. 7-7-20) - for 1066MHz FSB processors only
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
ASUS GeForce 8800 GT 512MB - with NVIDIA ForceWare 169.21
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Benchmarks

We encountered an issue installing BAPco's SYSmark 2007 Preview on the system and this was verified by AMD in its own testing. Hence we will be skipping this particular benchmark for the article, leaving us with the following:-

SPEC CPU2000 v1.3
Futuremark PCMark 2005 Pro
Lightwave 3D 7.5
3ds Max8 (SP2)
Cinebench 10
XMpeg 5.0.3 (DivX 6.8 encoding)
Futuremark 3DMark06 v1.1
AquaMark3
World in Conflict v1.05
Crysis v1.1



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