System setup and notes
| System | AMD AM2+ system | Intel LGA775 system |
|---|---|---|
| Processors | AMD Phenom '9600' (2.3GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, 2MiB L3 cache, AM2+, quad-core) AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (3.2GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2, dual-core) |
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775,
quad-core) |
| Motherboard | MSI K9A2 Platinum (AMD 790FX + SB600) | ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n (Intel X38 + ICH9R) |
| Memory | 4GBytes (4 x 1GiB) Corsair PC8500 Dominator EPP | 4GiB (2 x 1GiB) Corsair DDR3-1333 |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 @ 800MHz | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1069MHz |
| Graphics card(s) | ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB | |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |
| Optical drive(s) | Sony DW-Q30A | |
| BIOS revision | VP.0BC (11/08/2007) | 0504 (10/09/2007) |
| Mainboard software | Vista pre-installed drivers + AMD AHCI Driver 3.1.1540.11 | NVIDIA nForce package 15.01 |
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 7.11 BETA (8.43.1-071028a-055060E-ATI) | |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business 64-bit | |
| PSU | OCZ GameXStream 700W | |
| Monitor | Dell 2405FPW | |
Software
| Benchmarks | Sandra XII Lite Win64 float buffered memory-bandwidth ScienceMark 2.0 32-bit Build 21MAR05 memory latency CPU-Z v1.41 HEXUS.PiFast LAME multi-threaded benchmark - 701.5MB file - encoded into 128kbps stereo. DivX 6.61 (existing DV avi source-file, home-theatre profile, 1700Kbps, insane-quality video, 40Kbps, Stereo, 16KHz Audio) CINEBENCH R10 POV-Ray 32-bit 3.7.0 BETA 21a - internal benchmark mode Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103 DX9 Quake 4 v1.30 - OpenGL Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.1 - OpenGL |
|---|
Notes
Here is where all the lovely fun starts. We acquired an engineering-sample processor that was coded to the Phenom 9700's clock speed of 2.4GHz. We also noted that it was clocked in with a 4GHz HyperTransport link speed, too. We ran our entire suite of benchmark but had to completely discard them once AMD decided to pull the 9700 model from its line-up at the very last moment.Now, we've emulated a Phenom 9600 by reducing the multiplier to 11.5x. This in turn automatically disabled Cool'n'Quiet 2.0 and its associated power-saving benefits. Furthermore, with it disabled we see single-threaded performance dramatically increase when compared to C'n'Q-enabled Phenom 9700, to the extent that the pseudo 9600 is faster.
We also note that the MSI motherboard did not support DDR2-1066 memory and, as such, its performance may not be indicative of retail models'. All in all, the numbers you'll see on the following pages are derived from a pre-production CPU running on a non-optimised board but we don't expect the numbers to significantly change once retail samples are tested.
