AMD Phenom 9600 Review

Neoseeker has posted a review of the Phenom 9600. YOu can grab it here from Amazon for $309.99. We are currently testing the Phenom 9900.Testing the Phenom 9600 has been interesting. The BIOS and CPU-Z agreed on the speed of the processor, but AMD's Overdrive utility showed the "actual" speed as being roughly 5% faster than what the processor was set for. Regardless, at either 2.65GHz nor 2.75GHz the Phenom turned in some decent numbers, but frankly it could not touch the overclocked Intel results. The office results for Phenom were outstanding, however Phenom is not at this point capable of matching Intel parts clock-per-clock in performance. There is no doubt that it is an interesting piece of technology; and AMD's initial pricing for it does give it a chance for some market penetration. Personally, I would not hesitate to recommend a Phenom 9600 to someone who could use it to upgrade an existing Socket AM2 system. Getting a quad core processor for around $250-$280 for an existing single or dual core Socket AM2 system - without having to change anything else except updating the BIOS - is an excellent deal (provided such a BIOS update were available).

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