AMD Phenom 9900, and the Spider Platform

Final thoughts

The AMD Phenom 9900-based Spider platform looks fantastic on paper. The CPU's architecture is manifestly better than K8's, the chipset - especially northbridge - is better than RD580, and the Radeon HD 3850s offer a potent price-to-performance ratio. So why don't we finish off with an outright recommendation to buy, then?

The trouble for AMD is that Intel's Core 2 Quad processors, in their present 65nm Kentsfield guise, offer more for the same money. They can be placed on decent-performing Intel or NVIDIA DDR2-supporting chipsets and run with either Radeon or GeForce graphics cards - depending upon choice of core-logic.

The apparent synergy for the trio of AMD parts is compromised by lacklustre processor performance, and there's no easy way around that. You buy the best-performing component for the money and whilst the Phenoms show promise, Intel is one step ahead.

We can see only one instance where the Spider platform makes implicit sense over and above the competition's current offerings. You'd need to leverage two Radeon HD 3850s in CrossFire on a PCIe 2.0-equipped 7-series AMD motherboard. That way, you bring out the best of those components and have the joys of the all-in-one AMD OverDrive to play with.

The counterpoint to this line of thinking lies with eschewing Radeons and using two GeForce 8800 GT 256MiB cards in SLI, on an nForce 680i LT motherboard and with an Intel Core 2 Quad in the socket.

It all breaks down fairly easily, as far as we're concerned. AMD's Spider platform is a reasonable proposition that fails to fulfil its potential due to an under-performing quad-core processor and, frankly, poor southbridge on the supporting 7-series chipset. AMD needs to be more than reasonable; it needs to be an Intel- and NVIDIA-beater - and it's not.

Put simply, there is no compelling reason why you would look towards a Spider-based platform as your next upgrade. The mix-and-match competition can comfortably match AMD's performance-per-pound right now, without problems, and will only get better as 45nm processors and revised, feature-rich core-logics are released in Q1 2008.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of AMD's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

HEXUS.certification

HEXUS acknowledges that the AMD Spider platform successfully passed the stringent stability tests of the HEXUS Performance Analysis Team. However, in isolation, this is not a recommendation to buy.

AMD Phenom 9900 Spider platform

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Review: AMD Phenom 9900, and the Spider Platform

Final thoughts

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