AMD Working On New Phenom

Fudzilla reports that AMD is working on a 1.8GHz clocked quad-core 65-watt energy efficient Phenom and we can expect it shortly.

Said to be called the 9100E, the new energy efficient Phenom will feature both 2MB of L2 cache, 2MB of L3 cache and it will be based on the B-2 stepping, according to our sources. The 9100E is expected to be available late in the first quarter of 2008.

Requests from AMD to comment on the upcoming existence of the 65-watt Energy Efficient Phenom were met with a firm, “No comment” from AMD's PR.

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Phenom Compatibility Issues

Tomshardware took a look at Phenom compatibility and tried to test it on ten AM2 motherboards which were supposed to support it.

The results were disappointing. AMD's new quad core only worked with two Asus boards, while the remaining Biostar, Foxconn, Epox, MSI and Gigabyte boards weren't in a mood to cooperate.

Tomshardware concludes that as an upgrade option the Phenom is not yet mature, as the vast majority of motherboard manufacturers haven't done much to make it run on "old" AM2 motherboards. Although upgrading your Athlon 64 X2 system with a 165 euro quad core CPU seems like a tempting prospect it might be wise to wait for the new B3 stepping and motherboard updates.

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AMD Phenom CPUs To Be Further Delayed

AMD has recently notified its partners that the launch of higher-end quad-core Phenom processors, including the 9700 and 9900, will be postponed to the second quarter of 2008 from the original schedule of early 2008, according to sources at motherboard makers.

However, whether AMD's triple-core Toliman series CPUs will also see delay will be the key decision for the company, since Toliman offers a high price/performance ratio compared with Intel's quad-core CPUs. A delay for Toliman will hurt AMD the most, noted the sources.

The sources commented that the reason for the delay of 9700 and 9900 is because AMD has not yet been able to solve the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) erratum found in the chips. However, they added in saying that, in the long-term, AMD's decision is correct since pushing products that are not ready will only hurt the company more.

AMD declined to comment on this report. The company pointed out that it has not made any official announcement regarding a delay of the mentioned CPUs.

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AMD Slashes Phenom Prices

AMD is cutting Phenom prices in an effort to make it more competitive against Intel's quad core CPUs. The cheapest Phenom 9500 clocked at 2.2GHz now sells for €181, down 10 percent from last week's €199 euro. Thanks to the price cut, the new Phenom is now the cheapest quad core on the market, as Intel's Q6600 retails at around €200.

The 9600 price is unchanged, it's still selling for just over €220 and we're expecting a price cut sometime this week. The 9600 Black Edition is coming too, and we'll probably know the exact prices for both 9600 CPUs later today.

This might be the start of limited price war, although you shouldn't expect anything spectacular. Quad core CPUs dropping under €200 is good news for all consumers.

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Black Phenom For Overclockers Next Week

AMD didn’t even want to give up this information at an investors event, but it is working on the introduction of a brand new Black series of Phenom, meant for the retail.

This CPU has been inspired by the great success of the Athlon black edition box 5000+ and 6400+ series, and AMD hopes to get the same success with the unlocked Phenoms.

We don't know the clock speeds, but we will try to find out.

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Phenom X3 Simulation Tested, Faster Than X2

PC Gaming Hardware in Germany has what appears to be the first ever Phenom X3 benchmarks, but what they've gone and done is dissable one of the three cores on a Phenom X4 9600 clocked at 2.3GHz. This might be something close to what the real deal will perform like, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Their simulated X3 processor is faster than their 2.3GHz Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and another simulated processor, a Phenom X2 at 2.3GHz, which in other words was the same Phenom X4 9600 with two cores dissabled.

It didn't come close an Intel Q6600 that was also used for comparitive testing and the benchmarks were limited to WinRAR, Cinebench R10 and 3DMark06's CPU test. As everyone have already guessed by now, three cores are faster than two, but not as fast as four, so there you go.

To check out the complete test results click here.

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AMD Releases Phenom 9500 And 9600

AMD has finally released a new generation of processors to combat Intel's Core 2 processors. Additionally, the firm also released the Spider platform which uses Phenom CPUs, Radeon HD 3800 GPUs in CrossFire X and the new 790FX chipset.

AMD’s Spider platform offers a new class of enthusiast platform scalability, with multiple upgrade options to increase performance and boost compatibility with configurations that can deliver an estimated two teraflops of desktop processing power by harnessing four graphics processors. The multi-core design of AMD Phenom quad-core processors, based on Direct Connect Architecture, features an integrated memory controller designed to support memory speeds up to DDR2 1066, 128-bit floating point units and AMD’s Balanced Smart Cache for rapid access to memory, with a shared L3 cache for leading-edge performance on multi-threaded software.

The Phenom 9600 (2.3GHz) and Phenom 9500 (2.2GHz) are priced at $283 and $251, respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

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AMD Phenom X4 Processor Prices Unveiled

ISA Hardware, AMD's master distributor of processors, updated its website with pricing information of the upcoming AMD Phenom X4 processors:

• HD9500WCGDBOX CPU Desktop Phenom X4 9500 (4MB,95W,AM2) box $247.00

• HD9600WCGDBOX CPU Desktop Phenom X4 9600 (4MB,95W,AM2) box $278.00

• HD9700XAGDBOX CPU Desktop Phenom X4 9700 (4MB,125W,AM2) box $288.00

Note: These are distributor prices, the prices in retail stores will be a bit higher.

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AMD To Launch Three Phenom CPUs This Month

We can expect three Phenom processors from AMD this month itself according to The Inq.

This includes the Phenom 9500, 9600 and 9700 but it looks like AMD is having troubles to increase the clockspeed as the 9600 and 9700 are clocked much lower than expected:
We were expecting Phenom models 9500, 9600 and 9700 at 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6GHz. The bottom two are at 89W and the top at 125W. Sadly, that is not to be.

On a more recent set of slides for the Spider launch dated "October/November 2007", we are told the chips coming out on the 19th are indeed 9500, 9600 and 9700, but they have been castrated to mean a mere 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4GHz. Wattage also stays the same by model. Aargh.

It looks like AMD lost a bin on the chips, two if you are counting the 2.8 that they wanted to have out by the end of the year. If they get a speed bump to 2.6 in December, well, it probably won't cut it.

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AMD Phenom FX To Scale Up To 2.8GHz This Year

Rumour has it that the highest frequency Phenom FX processor from AMD will run at 2.8GHz.

The 2.6GHz and slower parts will launch as socket AM2+ only. These CPUs will be sampled and available in 2007, but probably no earlier than late November.

The 3GHz part will skip to 2008 but the sweet spot for both Intel and AMD is the 2.4GHz part, and this is where the money and volume sales come from. This will probably ignite a new price war.

Obviously, in addition to 2.8GHz FX and 2.6GHz parts, the Phenom X4 also launches at 2.2 and 2.4GHz.

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