After long delays and lots of changes AMD Phenom X4 finally arrived. AMD is in difficult situation this year because they failed to deliver high-end products with leading performance in almost any area. Their Athlon 64 (X2) processor series is not a very competitive with Intel offerings after Core 2 architecture appeared. ATI Radeon graphic chips lag behind NVidia ones (especially in very high-end area). What is more, ATI buyout still costs lots of money for them. Because of this, AMD reported losses every quarter this year. The company needs some new products to change their position. In September AMD released quad-core Opteron 23xx and 83xx processors for servers and workstations. Yesterday they finally released quad-core AMD Phenom (9500 and 9600) which are intended for desktop.
Once again second largest x86 processors manufacturer failed to deliver top product in performance. Even the weakest Intel quad-core Q6600 shows the same or better performance in the most tests than the best AMD model today and in a near future (9600 2,3 GHz and 9700 2,4 GHz). 9700 model was delayed until 2008 Q1 unexpectedly (officially because of lately found error in the processor which AMD wants to iron out before the release). On the other hand, company knew that this processors would not be competitive with Intel and set lower prices for them. Because of this, people who seeks for multicore processors new Phenoms can be attractive. What is more, they are even more attractive for people who has Socket AM2 systems and wants to upgrade. Processors showed their big potencial in multi-threaded applications and they are mostly faster clock-by-clock than Athlon64 processors in single-threaded ones. Besides, they have other additions in virtualisation, SSE, power savings, etc.
I was waiting for them more than a year. They are really late and even AMD admits that. The saddest thing is even after such delay they couldn't deliver something more powerful and first models are the weakest ones. Phenom 9700 delay just proves that AMD still has problems with Quad-Core processors and they are released just with the hope to get some more money in Christmas and New Year buying fever.
Phenom was announced together with RADEON 3000 graphic series and 7-series chipset families. Combined in a one system they forms the Spider platform. I was planning to buy a new desktop computer with year and preferred AMD platform (just because of personal reasons). However, this release was even more disappointing that I expected earlier. I will be waiting for 2008 Q1 to see if AMD can deliver high-end processors (at least 2,6 GHz). If no, probably I will delay my new computer even more. Intel plans to release Nehalem for the desktop in 2008 Q4. It would be a plenty of time for AMD to recover until that. Otherwise, I'll choose Intel system.
Once again second largest x86 processors manufacturer failed to deliver top product in performance. Even the weakest Intel quad-core Q6600 shows the same or better performance in the most tests than the best AMD model today and in a near future (9600 2,3 GHz and 9700 2,4 GHz). 9700 model was delayed until 2008 Q1 unexpectedly (officially because of lately found error in the processor which AMD wants to iron out before the release). On the other hand, company knew that this processors would not be competitive with Intel and set lower prices for them. Because of this, people who seeks for multicore processors new Phenoms can be attractive. What is more, they are even more attractive for people who has Socket AM2 systems and wants to upgrade. Processors showed their big potencial in multi-threaded applications and they are mostly faster clock-by-clock than Athlon64 processors in single-threaded ones. Besides, they have other additions in virtualisation, SSE, power savings, etc.
I was waiting for them more than a year. They are really late and even AMD admits that. The saddest thing is even after such delay they couldn't deliver something more powerful and first models are the weakest ones. Phenom 9700 delay just proves that AMD still has problems with Quad-Core processors and they are released just with the hope to get some more money in Christmas and New Year buying fever.
Phenom was announced together with RADEON 3000 graphic series and 7-series chipset families. Combined in a one system they forms the Spider platform. I was planning to buy a new desktop computer with year and preferred AMD platform (just because of personal reasons). However, this release was even more disappointing that I expected earlier. I will be waiting for 2008 Q1 to see if AMD can deliver high-end processors (at least 2,6 GHz). If no, probably I will delay my new computer even more. Intel plans to release Nehalem for the desktop in 2008 Q4. It would be a plenty of time for AMD to recover until that. Otherwise, I'll choose Intel system.
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