AMD Phenom 9900 and the Spider Platform

[Rosaline]

Another fine review, guys
Although there are a few issues and absences I'd like to raise...

Firstly, and I think people will agree with me on this, a nice Bang4Buck calculation and chart would be an excellent addition to update the article with! It would also help to establish the true price point of the spider platform.

I don't think anyone can really argue that AMD have not totally screwed up marketing their latest toys at competitive prices...

The other issue is one that I see regularly, and although it is exactly how consumers themselves select processors, it is unfair to AMD in an academic sense (but not, as mentioned, in the real world). Under ideal conditions, Core 2 chips can push 4 instructions per clock cycle, whereas AMD's designs are still limited to only 3 instructions. Intel's chips are effectively 33% faster than AMD's, and this should really be taken into account when selecting matching 'speeds'. However, as mentioned, jonny consumer knows nothing of VHDL, pipelines and result forwarding , they just want MEGAHURTZ

Of course, the hexus tradition under such situations tends to be to prefer to match on price. But AMD believe that they can set their prices at whatever they wish, making this impossible

In fact, I have great sympathies for the Hexus editorial team, as AMD really did not help out with providing good kit to review. Their choice of 3850 graphics cards in place of the preferred 3870 was puzzling, given that other components seem to have been selected for 'performance', rather than 'value'.

The 'Spider' platform could be a real boost to AMD's futures if they would only price it correctly. The world is crying out for a unified "performance on a budget" type system, and it would be a real seller. However AMD's pricing schemes continue to prevent them from capturing this niche.

[this_is_gav]

The platform has potential if AMD can hold out and multi-GPU finds a market quite quickly, but it's little more than potential at the moment, and potential rarely leads anywhere.

I don't think there'll be many who don't want AMD to succeed, as the K7 and K8 era was excellent from a consumers point of view, but it's difficult to recommend an AMD solution as things stand. The graphics I'm a fan of (that's more nV's (un)doing than ATi's to be fair), but in terms of performance neither CPU or GPU is there. While that's the case, they can play itsy-bitsy-Spider as much as they want, but it's not going to excite the enthusiasts at the moment.

[avery]

i think the price point right now is getting overlooked. i guess i look at it different though. the amd platform may not be as impressive as the intel right now but in the future it could be. the new amd platform using AM2+ will also support the AM3 processors when they come out if i remember correctly.

also while not on the high end getting an amd 770 based board is really cheap. alot of these include decent features, including esata ports on board as well as providing pci-express 2.0 support. so for some things they are fairly future proof at this time.

for instance from what i can tell the only way to get pci-express 2.0 from intel right now is on the X38 platform, which is over triple from what i can tell over an amd 770 based motherboard. amd is also trying to provide solutions that are cheaper.

this cheap solution is good as well because if you wanted to build a cheap gaming pc it could be done using an older regular AM2 processor on the AM2+ motherboard. and while they aren't as powerfull for the money of the cpu and motherboard its a way cheaper solution.

i still use a 939 system and it seems like the new AMD 770 chipset provides a cheap solution. is it faster than an intel, no, but the price is. intel is sweet. cpu's from intel compared to amd are usually fairly close in price. however the motherboard prices are a totally different story. the intel motherboards drive up the price of a build in a big way.

[shadowmaster]

Good review by hexus

Would not have mind seeing 3*/4* Crossifre- as I am quite curious on what performance it would give.

Anyhow how come hexus have not done a review on the 3850s?

[SHARKMEAT]

If you had a Videoo Card company and afew CPU plants I would hope you could get something working at the max performance. I think maybe Intel should by up Nivdia, and make there on Video cards and build there own chipsets that would support SLI. Kind of backing through the door seems to me. Why let Asus or who ever design MB to work with two Video cards. Maybe they like AMD after all lol.......

[GR-X]

I was surprised by the performance delta that Hexus reported in the CrossFire test with Quake Wars and Quake 4. More testing needs to be performed in other games like FEAR, Crysis, COD4, WiC, HL2 Ep2, SC, and CoH. I believe the performance boost from CrossFire Spider shows the true power of the 790FX chipset which is obviously optimized for multi-gpu systems.

I did some research over at the ORB and found a Spider system with a Phenom 9500 @ 2646 and 3870 CF@860/2492 that got 14386 3DMarks (3903 CPU, 5457 SM2.0, 7103 SM3.0). The Intel system with a Q6600 @2449 and 3870 CF(stock clocks?) got 13930 3DMarks (3833 CPU, 5214 SM2.0, 6900 SM3.0). Can a slight overclock on the 3870s explain 456 3Dmarks? If it can't does this mean that Spider CF is the fastest gaming platform on the planet? These questions need answers, Hexus. This reminds me of the phrase "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

[Sq7]

I've been following spider for quite a while now. And what I would really like to see is a complete spider system running against a system with no spider parts.

Also... I believe one of the reasons why the 3XX0s are not performing well in comparison to the 8800 cards is that they were designed around the new DX10.1 specification and all it brings to the table. Simply put I think we will soon see games that will run fine on the 3xx0s that will kill existing 8800 cards. Or at the very least you will see huge performance from the 8800, but poor visuals because some of the graphics settings will simply not be available. And of course then the card executing the code for the new features will have a poorer performance. Just like ATI has in the past given us HDR+AA support which is something that nvidia is still suffering with. The beauty that was Oblivion with HDR and AA at the same time vs the drab world some of my friends had to experience comes to mind. lol Many time they had better framerates than me of course. My game still ran smoothly. That is just one example though. In computer graphics you cannot look at performance alone. Why are there people pushing the limits of lifelike computer game graphics all the time anyway? ATI tries to be at the forefront in this. You can't use a dragster to win an F1 race. You need finesse. And as far as I can see NVidia is fielding mostly brute force at the moment (historically really...). I'm still playing all current games on my x1900GT with no performance issues. I just sometimes have to turn off some features. Generally though I just force everything to full quality via the catalyst control panel. And I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Just the other day AMD added support for a type of AA to the whole X1X00 range. Would NVidia do that? The only reason I will upgrade is to get access to a more advanced feature set. And when I do I will turn to the card with the best features/performance/price. And already at this stage it's looking like that card will be a Radeon.

lol as a side note: A friend of mine is still running an old 5950 ultra. He can play Titan Quest no problems. Except it looks like crap of course. Again.. Brute force (and the 5950 ultra was just plain scary in it's days) vs the finesse of a modern card.

I do not believe frames per second benchmarks are cutting it anymore. Not when the differences in performance means the gain or loss of 5-10 frames per second against 150 for example. Of course time alone will tell whether spider or an nvidia based system gives the richest gaming experience, but I'm starting to bet it will be so. And give spider a little time... There's still lots of optimization in the drivers and firmware to be done. Everybody was flaming the x2900 when it came out. But I have friends who do not regret the decision to buy one. Everything runs beautifully, no problems whatsoever seems to be the general consensus. While my friends running 8800s often complain about this and that. And every now and then they go like: OMG! look at the frame rate! All your bases R belong to us! Admittedly the X2000 series did feel like a bridge to DX10 compatibility. It's still a quality product.

[moogle]

finally someone who registers for the forum just to post about this has some good points to make/say.
welcome to hexus sq7 you decent poster you
im guessing you got a 2900 too

[ScottY_]

The spider platform won't boost the 38x0 cards over a normal chipset and if they do it would be minimal, still Phenoms lame assness wouldn't help it in anyway what so ever.

Or thats how i see it

[Sq7]

Thanks moogle

[2457]

oh.. what a brilliant test.....

Lets see...
2 Gbyte of ram.. Thats a joke with vista...
Have at least 4 gbyte...

Memory timings and speed 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1069MHz

COULD YOU GUYS set the memory timeing and speed identical?

and...
"under the rather large assumption that Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6700's pricing will drop to Phenom 9900 levels (~Ł199) by Q1 2008."

NICE... But... assumptions in a TEST are not a good idea.


Review eh?
You are ALL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBBBBBBSSS.

[moogle]

oh.. what a brilliant test.....

Lets see...
2 Gbyte of ram.. Thats a joke with vista...
Have at least 4 gbyte...

Memory timings and speed 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1069MHz

COULD YOU GUYS set the memory timeing and speed identical?

and...
"under the rather large assumption that Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6700's pricing will drop to Phenom 9900 levels (~Ł199) by Q1 2008."

NICE... But... assumptions in a TEST are not a good idea.


Review eh?
You are ALL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBBBBBBSSS.

If you werent noob yourself, and a fanboy, and a troll you'd realize the amd board doesnt support 1066. Noob..

They are both using 2gb so it doesnt matter... Noob...

That assumption isn't part of the test. It's part of the pricing.. Noob..

Great thread revival.. Noob...


Can't wait till you're banned... Noob..

[SiM]

He is not going to get banned for that. Hexus isn't that fascist just yet...

[moogle]

He is not going to get banned for that. Hexus isn't that fascist just yet...

Review eh?
You are ALL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBBBBBBSSS.

no one wants someone like that...

[SiM]

Still he won't get banned. Flamed, maybe, but banned, never...

[2457]

Who said AMD board uses 1066 ram?


Priceing..
Well...let it be the actual price. Then show the price/value rating.



and just to tell You I don't like AMD.
I like fair play.



joke of the day.
2 Gbyte of ram for 4 cores.
mmmmm... Yummmy..

Why not test them with ... 256 Mbyte of ram?
"They are both using 2gb so it doesnt matter... Noob..."

This low amount of ram is a bottleneck.