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Review: AMD Phenom X4 9850: Phenom fixed, but not phenomenal

by Parm Mann on 18 April 2008, 08:48

Tags: Phenom X4, Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition, Phenom X4 9600, Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), Gigabyte (TPE:2376), ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), AMD (NYSE:AMD), OCZ (NASDAQ:OCZ), Corsair, FSP Group (TPE:3015), PC

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Low-resolution gaming performance

As the system setup on page 3 shows, each of our test systems is equipped with a Radeon HD 3870 512MiB graphics card. All of the tests below utilise a gaming resolution of 1024x768 to minimise the possible hindrance of a GPU bottleneck. We're focusing solely on how the processors perform, so let's take a look, shall we?

The higher the frames per second, the better. AMD's high-end Phenom X4 9850 BE closes the gap on Intel's Q6600 and isn't far from catching it.

Quake 4 shows similar findings. The Phenom X4 9850 BE is the cream of the crop in terms of Phenom X4 processors, but, it's a familiar story when compared to Intel; close, but no cigar.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the closest call yet. The gap between the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and the Phenom X4 9850 BE is a mere 7.83 frames per second.

So, we've now established that the new-and-improved Phenom X4 9850 BE comes close, but ultimately can't overthrow Intel's ageing Q6600 in single-threaded, multi-threaded or gaming benchmarks. Are you seeing a trend here?