AMD’s Phenom processor may not be the powerhouse CPU everyone expected it to be but its low cost of entry means you can get into the quad-core game on the cheap. The Black Edition X4 9950 represents the company’s current top of the line and Guru 3D just so happens to have a review of it. Here’s a few of their thoughts:
Alright, let me start off with the pricing, the processor as tested today will cost you roughly 170 USD in e-tail at this very moment. Guys, for a quad-core processor that’s just extremely good value. In most scenarios this processor is definitely faster compared to a Core 2 Quad Q6600, and Intel knows it as they recently adapted their pricing strategy to match this product. Intel however already moved on towards the Penryn based quad-cores, and though we still need to test it, the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Quad Core Processor is likely a better match to this processor, yet sells for ~ 250 USD. So value wise… this processor wins.
The trick with this processor is that you really should give it the mainboard it deserves, and that would be a mainboard based on the AMD 790GX chipset. These mainboards can deal with the power requirements of this processor… and much more. We have to mention the power consumption of the processor as well though, as that’s a bit of a negative with the Phenom X4 9950. The TDP (maximum wattage) is set at 140 Watts, meaning if you fully stress the four logical cores of this processor, they’ll consume roughly 140 Watt. And admittedly .. it’s quite a lot. Overclocked things get worse though, just a mainboard + VGA in idle and then stressing 4 cores 100% resulted in a power draw of roughly 300 Watt (total PC) in total when we clocked it towards 3.2 GHz.
It’s an intriguing option when paired with a motherboard sporting AMD’s SB750 southbridge for extra-added tweaking room.
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