AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price

So far, Phenom X4 9850 which we are reviewing today, has been at the top end of AMD's quad-core processors. With the advent of the model Phenom X4 9950, it had to give in the honorable first place, but that does not belittle its merits at all. The difference in the clock speeds of these processors (2.5 and 2.6 GHz) is minor, and in view of the much lower price the CPU Phenom X4 9850 looks more attractive to the potential buyer.

This is how the CPU being reviewed looks.

Below, you can see the screenshots of the CPU-Z utility with the specifications of the CPU and the test platform.

Before we move on to the tests, we say a few words on the rival which we selected for the contest – the quad-core CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300. We decided to take just that model for comparison, because Phenom X4 9850 and Core 2 Quad Q9300 are of the same clock speed – 2.5 GHz. This allows comparing the differences in performance related to their architectures. As we know, AMD Phenom processors offer L3 cache memory common for all the cores. At the same time, Intel's quad-core processors do not have 3rd level cache memory because physically they are two chips merged on a single substrate, so L3 cache is common only for each pair of cores. Another important distinction is in that AMD processors offer an integrated memory controller, whereas Intel processors communicate with the memory (RAM) via the "north bridge" of the chipset. We are now trying to find out which approach provides better performance.

Here are the major specifications of the processors which take part in this test:

The approximate prices are given according to www.price.ru for the "boxed" versions of the processors.

The Tests

As the test platform for Phenom X4 9850, we used the motherboard ASUS Crosshair II Formula (NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI). The Core 2 Quad Q9300 was tested on the motherboard ASUS P5QC (Intel P45). In both cases, we used the memory Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5D running in the DDR2-1066 mode, and the video card GeForce 9800GTX.

Certainly, we could not ignore the matter of overclocking. One of the decisive arguments brought in by the supporters of Intel produce is the impressive overclocking capability of Core processors, which is about 3.5-4 GHz with the air-powered cooling (meant is the "regular" overclocking for games and work, and not for records). The specimen of Core 2 Quad Q9300 which we got for tests confirmed the general statistics – it was quite capable of running at about 3.7 GHz. Nevertheless, we decided not to go too deep looking for the maximum stable frequency during overclocking because it strongly depends on the specific specimen of the CPU, capabilities of a specific motherboard, and is unlikely to reflect the capability of a typical computer. For convenience, we stopped at precisely 3.0 GHz. Since the multiplier in Core 2 Quad Q9300 is locked an equal to 7.5, to get this high clock speed we raised the system bus speed from 333 MHz to 400 MHz. Due to this figure and the standard coefficients, the mode of the operating memory remained the same – DDR2-1066.

As regards the Phenom X4 9850, its multiplier is unlocked, so there were no issues about overclockinig it. The processor started running at 3.0 GHz even without raising the VCore voltage. But overclocking was not complete at that - the specimen failed to cope with higher clock speeds despite our experiments with raising the VCore voltage. Indeed, AMD processors are still unable to boast an outstanding overclocking capability, which causes a derogation from supporters of Intel. However, far not every user overclock his/her computer, and to estimate the performance scalability with the rise in frequency, it suffices to overclock the CPU to 3.0 GHz.

The set of tests that we used is pretty scanty, but this time our goal is not to run a detailed test of architectures. In our view, it is much more interesting to look at these processors with the eyes of the "regular" buyer who faces quite a hard choice. Now let's see what performance the top-end AMD processor and the mid-end CPU by Intel (which costs more) will demonstrate at nominal frequencies and in overclocking.

As usual, we start with synthetic benchmarks.

These tests of Everest Ultimate perform integer calculations. As you can see, the results shown by the rivals are quite close. In these two tests, there is a minor advantage of Phenom X4 9850, and at PhotoWorxx test the Core 2 Quad Q9300 takes a lead.

The FPU tests enable the floating-point computational blocks, and at that the Intel CPU is second to none. Somehow surprising is the multiple difference in results at the FPU Julia test. Perhaps the version of Everest Ultimate that we used is somehow outdated and is not quite adequate at "comprehending" Phenom processors.

The tests of operating memory speed are highly contradictory. Core 2 Quad Q9300 demonstrates uniform enough results for all the types of operations, whereas Phenom X4 9850 demonstrates an impressive read speed, but failed at memory write and copy operations. Interestingly, raising the system bus speed favors to the performance gain of Core 2 Quad Q9300 at that test, although the mode of the operating memory did not change at all.

The CPU tests from the 3DMark’06 suite are about rendering of a graphic scene fully performed at the CPU. The total results for both the processors almost make no difference from one another and depend only on the CPU clock speed.

Of course, the results of each test follow the same rule and are almost identical for the processors in question.

The benchmark integrated into WinRar albeit relates more to "synthetic" tests, but it is more topical to the user. As you can see, in the multi-threading mode the Phenom X4 9850 demonstrates perfect results which, to all appearances, full depend on the memory subsystem since no essential changes occur with the rise of frequency. Even when overclocked, Core 2 Quad Q9300 is unable to catch up with the rival, however, the raise of the system bus speed affects the results quite positively. In the single-threaded mode, the picture somehow changes – Core 2 Quad Q9300 takes a lead, with Phenom X4 9850 lagging behind.

The PdnBench utility is based on the popular graphic editor PaintNet and appears to be a kit of filters used in image processing. This test estimate the time of the script execution, so the smaller result is the best. At this test, Core 2 Quad Q9300 proved to be an undisputable leader.

Finally, the most "real application of our today's kit. Since the goal is about comparing the performance of processors and not video cards, in the CPU test of Crysis we set a relatively low screen resolution in order to level the effect of the video card if possible. However, we decided not to confine to only the "weak" graphic modes and ran tests for the three graphic quality settings – low, medium, and high (we ran the tests under WindowsXP). The produced results have proved highly remarkable. At the low and medium quality settings, the leader is Core 2 Quad Q9300. However, enabling the high graphic quality in the game radically changes the situation! Now we see that Phenom X4 9850 rushes forward. Even when overclocked, despite the raise of the system bus speed at Core 2 Quad Q9300, the Phenom X4 9850 is standing firm and not yielding. We take the risk to assume that such behavior of results is related to the the L3 cache memory in Phenom X4 9850 which is missing in Core 2 Quad Q9300. The scene rendering in the "high" mode is complicated by the high details and the great number of objects for which the "physics" of their behavior has to be computed. Perhaps, it's just in this very case the L3 cache comes in really handy. In our forthcoming materials, we'll find out how true our assumptions prove, and it's a good way of doing that with the Futuremark 3DMark Vantage test suite.

Final Words

Despite the not very high overclocking capability, the derogation to AMD Phenom processors, in our view, are unlikely to be justified. Although currently you won't be able setting new records with these processors, they may prove to be highly attractive to the regular user. AMD Phenom and Intel Core 2 of the same pricing category offer approximately equal performance level, but AMD Phenom is a bit cheaper.

We intentionally avoided bringing in a summary table of costs of the platforms, because this choice highly depends on the tasks faced by the user. It is highly probable that fanciers of overclocking will prefer Intel processors, but then you would have to spend a lot of efforts choosing the right motherboard capable of revealing all the power of the CPU. It is hard to say how expensive the system would be. At the same time, AMD Phenom processors with the multiplier unlocked do not pose special requirements to motherboards in terms of stable operation at "nonstandard" frequencies. There is the only reservation – the high demand to the load upon the power circuitry of the CPU, because higher-end AMD Phenom processors stand out with their appetites because of the 65-nm process technology. Anyway, the leading manufacturers of motherboards have already taken care about that – simply don't by the cheap "noname".