AMD's Phenom Unveiled: A Somber Farewell to K8
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2007 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance
To highlight CPU performance differences, all of our 3D gaming benchmarks were run at 1024 x 768, so keep in mind that real world gameplay will most likely be at more GPU bound resolutions with CPU differences mattering less. That being said, this is a CPU review, so we do want to know which of these chips runs game-code the best.
It turns out that gaming performance is really a mixed bag; there are a couple of benchmarks where AMD really falls behind (e.g. Half Life 2 and Unreal Tournament 3), while in other tests AMD is actually quite competitive (Oblivion & Crysis).
While Phenom suffers greatly in video encoding and 3D rendering tests, there is hope for it as the 9700 can actually compete clock-for-clock with Core 2 in some games. If all you do is game on your machine, with the right video cards you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference between a Phenom and a Core 2 system - that being said, if you're looking at quad-core, chances are that you're doing something else with your system other than game.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
124 Comments
View All Comments
agello24 - Saturday, February 16, 2008 - link
im still not ready to switch to intel. ill be buying my phenom shortly.PeterCollier - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
How's that TLB cold bug working out for you?Verygood - Friday, January 8, 2021 - link
I’ve been in a coma for 13 years what happenedGenoR32 - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
I still believe in AMD, and i know they will release a nice product line-up in the coming months, or probably 2009... i have a Core2 PC now b/c i cant deny the fact that they are really strong CPU's... but my DDR3 upgrade will be on an AM3 system... i think they will be really competitive.Greetings
JumpingJack - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Are you still waiting?TheCatOfWar - Monday, April 23, 2018 - link
Not for the last year, haThatguy97 - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
Can't believe socket am3 is still aroundruxandy - Tuesday, October 20, 2020 - link
Well... that took a while, but it's finally happening in 2020.eye smite - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
I didn't comment on this review when it first came out cause I didn't want to read the whole thing. It reads more like a rant on a blog than a review, he didn't want to go to Cali, so what. In the time since this article the phenom has proved to be a good cpu, I noticed in the last week that HP and Gateway have started selling systems in Best Buy and Circuit City with phenoms. This cpu was rushed out and it will take a bit of time to mature. It's the same thing we saw with the athlon64 from 2k3, had it been as developed as it needed to be, they would not have gone from socket 753 to 939 to am2 and so on. Amd should have made the smaller leaps to a quad core athlon64 til phenom was ready, but they have bad decision makers these days it seems.JumpingJack - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
There was no rant in this article, there was a stern condemnation of an attempt by AMD to control the benchmarking and review process, to influence what should be independent and transparent review of a product to the marketplace.