Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition Email This Print This View My Personal Library Heavy Gear March 2008 • Vol.8 Issue 3 Page(s) 33 in print issue Add To My Personal Library AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition Phenom 9600 Black Edition $239 AMD www.amd.com CPU Rating: 3.5 Specs: Socket AM2+; Clock speed: 2.3GHz; HyperTransport Link: 3.6GHz; Cache: 2MB L3 (shared), 2MB L2 (512K per core), 512K L1 (128K per core); 65nm process AMD’s line of native quad-core Phenom processors left many enthusiasts feeling a bit flat upon their arrival. At like clock speeds, Phenom processors put a hurting on the aging Athlon 64 X2 in most applications, especially those that were multithreaded. But in comparison to Intel’s additions to its Core 2 lineup, the Phenom fell short (not to mention the Phenom’s TLB [translation lookaside buffer] bug that hinders performance when patched). The competition and perceived shortcomings of Phenom has forced AMD to be creative with the pricing and positioning of its current flagship processors. The Phenom 9600 Black Edition is the fruit of AMD’s current creativity. The Phenom 9600 BE is essentially identical to the standard 9600 in terms of features, performance, and even price. But the Black Edition has an unlocked multiplier for more flexible overclocking. By altering the HT clock and voltage alone, I’ve had trouble overclocking standard Phenom 9600 processors much past 2.6GHz with the current crop of socket AM2+ motherboards. The 9600 BE, however, using a combination of voltage, multiplier, HT clock manipulation, and nothing more than a stock AMD cooler, had no trouble breaking 2.8GHz. (It would even boot into Windows Vista at 3GHz, but the system was far from stable.) Phenom definitely needs some time to mature for AMD to work out all of the kinks, but for unwavering AMD fans looking to upgrade to a quad-core CPU, the Phenom 9600 BE is currently the chip to own. by Marco Chiappetta PCMark Vantage PCMark Score 4181 Memories 3772 TV & Movies 3613 Gaming 4654 Music 3514 Communications 3105 Productivity 4069 POV-Ray 3.7 (beta 23) 1572 Cinebench 10 Single-threaded 2043 Multithreaded 7411 3DMark06 CPU Score 3229 Crysis 800 x 600, low quality 83.22  User Reviews Be the first to write a review of this product Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. Enter A Subject (key words or a phrase): ALL Words (‘digital’ AND ‘photography’) ANY Words (‘digital’ OR ‘photography’) Exact Match ('digital photography'- all words MUST appear together) Home      Copyright & Legal Information      Privacy Policy      Site Map      Contact Us Copyright © 2009 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved.