AMD Phenom 9600 (page 9: Conclusion)

Conclusion

With an average performance gain of 17.4% with the same number of cores, the Phenom’s K10 definitely offers greater efficiency compared to the Athlon 64 X2 and its K8 architecture. Unfortunately, as noteworthy as these gains are it’s are not enough for AMD to take the lead in terms of performances. In fact, the Phenom 9600 still quite far behind and is on average equivalent to 85.8% of a Q6600.

Intel Core architecture thus offers the luxury of being slightly more efficient at equivalent frequencies as well as having the ability to easily increase in frequency. At the same time the AMD Phenom is currently limited to 2.3 GHz. This combo means that Intel is without competition on the high end and should be able to enjoy this situation for some time. Intel’s architectural evolution combined with advanced fabrication processes –45nm versions of Core processor being both less expensive and low power – means AMD is facing a tough challenge.

The creator of the Athlon decided to try and attack this problem via two distinct approaches. The first is to feature a complete platform based on a CPU-GPU-Chipset trio and in addition they are the only one to do so. However, for the moment and while waiting for CrossFire X the Spider platform does not offer any real advantage compared to the competition. The second AMD strategy is the Phenom’s aggressive pricing. The 9600 and 9500 were $283 and $251 upon their release while Intel doesn’t offer a Quad Core for less than $266. This is good but given that the 9600 not does not match the Q6600’s performances, AMD will need to make a little more effort in this area.

In the absence of a battle in the performance domain, AMD will therefore have to compete with a better performance / price ratio despite a theoretically higher production cost. This could be risky but is the only option that will allow it to sell masses of Phenoms. The other trump card for AMD could be the tri-core which will be even less expensive and have interesting performances. This is something that we could see in these tests when they were compared to dual cores in applications which make good use of multithreading…

Of course, beyond the price there are other factors. The possibilities for evolution, for example, as we do not yet know to what extent AMD will be able to increase the Phenom’s performances. On the contrary, we know more or less where Intel is going with its Core2 45nm. For the moment, AMD is planning 2.4 and 2.6 GHz versions in the first quarter of 2008. While we are on the subject of evolution, it’s unfortunate that AM2 compatibility isn’t fully functional at this time. We are hoping this is only the lack of an adequate bios for the motherboard in question.

Disappointing for performance fanatics, the Phenom will therefore have to hope its aggressive prices have an impact. We can only hope for AMD that the arrival of new steppings in the coming months and the transition to 45nm planned for the end of 2008 will allow K10 to really take off in terms of frequency. Otherwise, the Phenom will find itself in a perilous and unexpected position.