Are phenom's getting a bad rap?

This is an observation that I had with the phenom's. Ever since they came out they have been plagued with 1 major bug and 1 minor bug, I forgot what the first bug is called, but it limits it clock, and the minor is the errata. the reason why I say the errata is minor is the only way for it to rear it's ugly head is to run 4 VM's at once, and how many of us (major servers excluded) run 4 VM's at once. Phenom clock-for-clock is not that far off from intels. There is one thing that I think we need to remember, This is just the first wave from a company that has very limited resources. AMD has promised that L3 stepping will fix the major bugs and will clock higher
The big problem that AMD has right now is releasing the x4's too early and not fixing these bugs first, giving the phenom cores a bad rap. I think that judging the phenoms based on a buggy first stepping is not really giving them a fair chance.

These are just my thoughts, what do you guys think.

The performance numbers on the Phenom right now are accurate. The TLB Errata does not actually effect performance, the patch does. Even with the TLB patch disabled the Phenom only has so-so single-threaded performance. In multi-threaded conditions you actually get to see the CPU shine but most software is still single threaded. Also, as you say not many desktop users will ever use virtual machine software and run into the bug. The single-threaded performance is the key issue with the Phenom. In fact in some cases the X2 6000+/6400+ outperform an overclocked Phenom in single threaded apps. I would like to add that the Phenom still makes a great upgrade choice if you're an AM2 user. Overall, Phenoms are the fastest AMD CPU's you can buy and they will get up to 2.6 or 2.7Ghz reliably. Then again I must stop myself and look at the fact they cannot go higher than 2.7Ghz in most cases I read about. I'M AN OVERCLOCKER! I gotta be able to push 3Ghz just for show. I currently run an Opteron 185 and had it up to 3001mhz until my Monsoon II Lite TEC cooler caught fire (its an engineering defect they ALL have) and I've loved AMD for years. Water cooling is in my future but a Phenom B2 rev. is not. The B3 stepping will hopefully allow for higher overclocks. As for now, I wouldn't recommend a Phenom for a fresh build, but rather only for an upgrade choice for an AM2 user. Unfortunately you won't even get all the bells and whistles that come with the Phenom unless you have an AM2+, made-for-phenom chipset on your mobo.

I also consider myself an AMD fanboy and thats exactly why I'll complain about the Phenom. I know AMD can do better ,but they really slipped up this round. Also theres news that they plan on delaying or ditching Bulldozer all together in their Fusion products come 2009. Unless they want to only be considered for low-end builds, they need a fresh new micro architecture on the market that can compete clock for clock with Intel.

The second problem I think is NB speed, over about 1800 it craps.
If we could get 2.8G from a Phenom it would beat the Windsors running at 3.2G in single threaded apps. Currently at 2.4G, I'm seeing smoother response in some games on the Phenom. I have not had time to do more compares but from what I've seen it's nice improvement but not a major bump! Running single gives you all the shared memory which helps with bloated games. Running duel at 2.4G against a 2.8G Windsor saw nice boost in speed, look for the Phenom thread I started. Rendering on the Phenom was noticably faster on the Phenom.

I don't know why they were even allowed to continue to roll out faulty chips after the bugs started surfacing. They should have been required to recall every chip and fix the bugs then give everyone who bought a faulty chip and brand new one. I don't care how much it would cost, it's AMD's fault for coming out with faulty products in the first place.

exactly,. lets sell "broken" chips, essentially what they are
.

the other issue is, how long has AMD been waiting to come out with these CPU's when intel had has their out for how much longer and AMD still underperformed clock for clock.,.

Shiggity said:

I don't know why they were even allowed to continue to roll out faulty chips after the bugs started surfacing. They should have been required to recall every chip and fix the bugs then give everyone who bought a faulty chip and brand new one. I don't care how much it would cost, it's AMD's fault for coming out with faulty products in the first place.

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They do not NEED to recall the processors. THey run at the rated speed with no problem. That is all that is guaranteed when you buy a processor that that it will run at 2.2 ghz or 2.3, they are under no obligation to worry about a bug that only bears it's head when it is overclocked

said bug was to affect server users, not home users and not ocing.. ocing is the fact they still have to tweak the die. we are after all talking native quad core, its not the same as using 2 dual-core dies.

Dapman02 said:

They do not NEED to recall the processors. THey run at the rated speed with no problem. That is all that is guaranteed when you buy a processor that that it will run at 2.2 ghz or 2.3, they are under no obligation to worry about a bug that only bears it's head when it is overclocked

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I would not support a company with that policy / attitude is my point.

the issue is they are selling a broken product,m simple as that, same as games that come out that dont half work properly... or video cards that claim X performance and dont until X driver gets released.
uforuantly it is the nature of the computer world, i udnerstand CPU's often have along list of problems and bugs, but ones that are this large and can affect a massive market of people ?

So far the only complaints are coming from OCers and most of those problems are due to the speeds and unstable hardware not a TLB problem.

I have built 6 Phenom systems in the last 2+ months.All for different friends and family.I was going to build a K10 system for myself,but after all the hassle and BS I had with others systems,I gave up.At least until 45nm.
Almost all of them had stabilty problems stock or oc'd.Most are much better now stock,after a few BIOS upgrades/flashes.

As things stand right now,I would say stay away until AMD manages to get K10 out on 45nm,and they are selling at a competetive price,with good to great performance.If you are an overclocker stay far,far away from the damn things.Grab a cheap,ultra fast,very cool running 45nm C2D + P35 mobo,and have fun.

Check this out....


Ouch ! For the lazy here,just skip to the conclusion page.Its well written,to the point,and honest. GL !

TBH yes they have gotten a bad rap... i mean a fully unlocked phenom 9600 is 239 bucks... stock clocked 2.3ghz... and max i have seen them get to is 2.65-2.7ghz... thats HORRIDLY PETHETIC!. you could grab a Xeon X3210 (2.13ghz socket 775) for 5 bucks more (244) that would not only perform better at its lower stock clock compared to the phenom 2.3ghz stock, but you could EASILY grab 3ghz outta the X3210 then the phenom in no way could keep up. And to get that oc outta the x3210 you could grab any p35 mobo that allows ocing (essentially any mobo that’s not an intel mobo)… we are talking 90 bucks for a board that would get you to 3ghz no prob, the phenom you need a special new board that costs quite a bit…

The ONLY place I could see someone buying a phenom would be a person that did rendering / movie editing in which 4 cores could actually be used, and if they already had a full AMD setup that could accept the phenom, and they wanted to wait for nelaham to come out. Other than that phenom, and im sorry AMD fanboys, is just a flippin joke. And whats even worse is the fact that amd already has plans for 45nm when they havnt even come close to gettin 65nm down.

I really hope amd has something better coming to bring some type of remote competition to intel, cus without competition, we all get screwed.


EDIT: and i didnt even get into the fact the phenom sucks power like an old prescott...

thanks for posting that shodan that was a good read.

nd4spdbh2 said:

TBH yes they have gotten a bad rap... i mean a fully unlocked phenom 9600 is 239 bucks... stock clocked 2.3ghz... and max i have seen them get to is 2.65-2.7ghz... thats HORRIDLY PETHETIC!. you could grab a Xeon X3210 (2.13ghz socket 775) for 5 bucks more (244) that would not only perform better at its lower stock clock compared to the phenom 2.3ghz stock, but you could EASILY grab 3ghz outta the X3210 then the phenom in no way could keep up. And to get that oc outta the x3210 you could grab any p35 mobo that allows ocing (essentially any mobo that’s not an intel mobo)… we are talking 90 bucks for a board that would get you to 3ghz no prob, the phenom you need a special new board that costs quite a bit…

The ONLY place I could see someone buying a phenom would be a person that did rendering / movie editing in which 4 cores could actually be used, and if they already had a full AMD setup that could accept the phenom, and they wanted to wait for nelaham to come out. Other than that phenom, and im sorry AMD fanboys, is just a flippin joke. And whats even worse is the fact that amd already has plans for 45nm when they havnt even come close to gettin 65nm down.

I really hope amd has something better coming to bring some type of remote competition to intel, cus without competition, we all get screwed.


EDIT: and i didnt even get into the fact the phenom sucks power like an old prescott...

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Pretty much all this verbatim. Phenoms deserve every ounce of scrutiny they get because they are underperforming, power sucking quads that can't overclock for crap.

What I am saying, is cant revisions make a chip faster?

dealmaster said:

Pretty much all this verbatim. Phenoms deserve every ounce of scrutiny they get because they are underperforming, power sucking quads that can't overclock for crap.

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haha well thats the simple way to say my longwinded answer

Dapman02 said:

What I am saying, is cant revisions make a chip faster?

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not really... revisions (steppings) are usually only minor things but nothing major like an arcitecture change... the current phenoms are NOT going to get much if any faster in later revisions.

Dapman02 said:

What I am saying, is cant revisions make a chip faster?

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revision's bring bug fixes and sometimes changes to the die. not all the time this will bring a faster chip. it may bring a more eff power used to work done per clock cpu. its more of binning issue since the consisty of making the dies seems low right now for 2.4ghz. If they were able to make the 2.4ghz in any kind of high numbers they would be out by now. it has more to do with the tweaking manufacting of the die, then fixing the die errata's. they need to worry about getting higher yeilds first before getting faster cores. if they cant meet the demand for say their butter section, servers. what good would a faster clock do them if they can only put them out in small numbers. meaning if they can only get say 8 2.4ghz or higher parts from each wafer. then your going to be waiting some time before any large number of those cores will ship.

Shiggity said:

I don't know why they were even allowed to continue to roll out faulty chips after the bugs started surfacing. They should have been required to recall every chip and fix the bugs then give everyone who bought a faulty chip and brand new one. I don't care how much it would cost, it's AMD's fault for coming out with faulty products in the first place.

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Core 2 Duos had 67 errata when they shipped and only 20 were actually patched in the BIOS or fixed. You may not have heard much at all about that either because Intel downplayed the problems and they were still faster than AMD. The TLB Errata on the Phenom is actually really insignificant to the desktop user. You would NEVER run into the TLB problem during typical usage. It actually hasn't been replicated by any reviewers to date either. The only people that may run into the problem were the enterprise users running racks of servers and lots of virtual machines. The TLB Errata was way too overblown by people and if you think AMD is a bad company then Intel must be the Devil for releasing the Core 2's. AMD shouldn't have even bothered patching the desktop versions.

The only reason the Phenom is bad is its performance and design, not the TLB errata. Its a huge die so it doesn't clock well and the L3 speed is tied to the north bridge so it kills all of the potential. Otherwise its a fabulous architecture, it just doesn't have any breathing room (slow L3) and can't stretch it's legs (high clocks).

Heres a link talking about the 67 Core 2 Duo errata it shipped with (Intel is such a horrible company ): http://www.geek.com/intels-conroe-has-67-errata-bugs/

^^^ that is the info i was thinking of.

wingless said:

Core 2 Duos had 67 errata when they shipped and only 20 were actually patched in the BIOS or fixed. You may not have heard much at all about that either because Intel downplayed the problems and they were still faster than AMD. The TLB Errata on the Phenom is actually really insignificant to the desktop user. You would NEVER run into the TLB problem during typical usage. It actually hasn't been replicated by any reviewers to date either. The only people that may run into the problem were the enterprise users running racks of servers and lots of virtual machines. The TLB Errata was way too overblown by people and if you think AMD is a bad company then Intel must be the Devil for releasing the Core 2's. AMD shouldn't have even bothered patching the desktop versions.

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So AMD bugs aren't a problem but Intel ones are? Since when does typical usage include a quad cpu?

wingless said:

The only reason the Phenom is bad is its performance and design, not the TLB errata. Its a huge die so it doesn't clock well and the L3 speed is tied to the north bridge so it kills all of the potential. Otherwise its a fabulous architecture, it just doesn't have any breathing room (slow L3) and can't stretch it's legs (high clocks).

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Phenom seems to be a fine CPU, it just shouldn't have been released yet with the problems it's suffering, for their reputation alone it might have actually been better for AMD to not release it at all as there's not a lot of good will going around at the moment.