X-bit labs

AMD Fan Kit: Phenom 9600 Black Edition CPU + DFI LANParty UT 790FX-M2R Mainboard

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 01/22/2008 | 04:19 PM ]

Although quad-core Phenom processors cannot boast super high performance, AMD still has a bunch of fans sticking by. Our today’s article is written specifically for these guys. We are going to discuss one of today’s overclocker platforms and Phenom fine tuning techniques.

Table of contents:

• AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
  
• DFI LANParty UT 790FX-M2R Mainboard
  
• Overclocking the Easy Way
  
• Overclocking the Hard Way
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance
  
• General Performance
  
• 3D Games
  
• Media Content Encoding
  
• Final Rendering
  
• Other Applications
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Conclusion
  

The launch of new quad-core AMD Phenom processors unfortunately didn’t cause any significant changes in the processor market. Frankly speaking, new AMD CPUs turned out quite a disappointment for the fans of this company’s solutions. According to multiple benchmarks including our own test session discussed in the article called Phenom CPU: Christmas Gift from AMD, Phenom processors cannot compete against quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad processors and lose dramatically to them in terms of performance in nominal mode and during overclocking, as well as in terms of heat dissipation rates. Unfortunately, AMD hasn’t yet taken advantage of the only way to make Phenom an attractive choice for economical users by reducing the price of these processors according to their performance level. We believe that these processors are a little overpriced at this time, which can actually be explained by their high production cost. For example, it could be coming from the monolithic design of the AMD processors unlike Intel’s more reasonable dual-die design.

In addition to the not very attractive features, AMD’s rep was also shaken by the news about the so-called TLB error. And although this matter hardly affects desktop platform users at all, the performance drop resulting from fixing this problem turned out yet another factor spoiling AMD newcomer’s image.

In other words, AMD has very few chances left to win the computer enthusiasts’ hearts. Nevertheless, they gave it a try by launching Phenom 9600 Black Edition – a top processor in their quad-core CPU line-up designed specifically for overclockers. Unlike other representatives of this processor family, this CPU features an unlocked clock frequency multiplier, which eliminates all problems and limitations during overclocking in almost any hardware configuration. However, will this be enough to get overclockers back to AMD fan camp? Today we will try to answer this question in the article devoted specifically to Phenom 9600 Black Edition CPU.

We decided to combine our discussion and tests of the new AMD processor with another look at Spider Platform that was proclaimed to be the best hardware environment for Phenom. Since this platform boasts fully fledged support of new Socket AM2+, the mainboards built on AMD 790FX (and its simpler modifications such as AMD 790X and AMD770) will become the ideal solution for Phenom based overclocker systems. And it was real easy for us to choose the mainboard for our today’s needs. For the past few years DFI Company is considered to be one of the best manufacturers of mainboards for computer enthusiasts using AMD platforms. By the time AMD launched their Phenom 9600 Black Edition CPU, DFI prepared a new promising product based on AMD 790FX chipset – DFI LANParty UT 790FX-M2R.

So, our today’s article is actually not just a CPU review, but an overclocker investigation of the new platform features. We will talk about the new processor, the mainboard and then will overclock this system in order to shape up the main guidelines for successful overclocking of the new AMD CPUs.