AMD Phenom X4 9850, 9750 and 9550

Cheap Motherboards and Hot CPUs?

We reported a while back that MSI's K9A2 CF, an AMD 790X-based motherboard, only supports CPUs that are under the 125W envelope. We've learnt more recently though that this is not exclusive to MSI – other vendors of more inexpensive boards based on the 770X and more recent 780G chipset are also forgoing support. But does it really matter?

First of all, the 125W AMD 6000+/6400+ are certainly inexpensive (the 89W versions are simply unobtainable) and therefore should more likely find themselves paired with one of these cheaper motherboards. But more to the point, how many are likely to want to pair an expensive 9850 Black Edition CPU with a motherboard that has very few BIOS options to cater to it? Probably not as many.

What is annoying and almost deceptive is the lack of transparency – go to any motherboard vendor site and you'd be tricked into thinking every board supports every AM2/AM2+ CPU, which simply isn’t true. Check the CPU support list carefully before buying is the only advice we can offer at the moment.

In the very price sensitive mainstream market, adding extra VRMs to cheaper boards makes them more expensive and less competitive for a potentially small quantity of users who will buy these 125W CPUs. The MSI 790X board is a little more unforgivable because it's a chipset more catered for the enthusiast, however some 780G boards are being launched as ATX and with the new SB700 southbridge it might offer more appealing features.

While the MSI survived our original testing and extended heavy load test without issue using a 125W Athlon 64 X2 6000+, MSI says it had to remove support because of long term reliability problems. In contrast, and Asus 780G board failed almost immediately when Anandtech tried a similar thing.

Final Thoughts

Without considering overclocking, AMD has improved the Phenom B3s and made quite a positive impact. The improved memory performance and corrected silicon is absolutely a step in the right direction, and what the Phenoms should have been launched as six months ago. OK, so what's done is done, and at least even AMD's fastest CPU is still affordable; hell, even the enthusiast Black Edition is consumer friendly – Intel could learn a thing or two rather than pushing a what appears on this end to be perceived arrogance, because of the price of its Extreme Edition processors.

However, we feel AMD has put too much weight on the quad-core side of things – true, there are now tri-cores to bridge the gap that Intel hasn't filled yet, but most people will still be content with a dual-core processor and as we've shown, you don't need quad-cores for Crysis and World in Conflict. That's not to say quad core processors like the Q6600 G0 or Phenom X4 9850 are bad purchases – in fact, they're great buys as there is headroom for enthusiasts in both chips.

And on that note, the good thing for AMD is that the overclocking experience we've had from our Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition was very fruitful – it was far more enjoyable than the frustrating time we had with the 9600 Black Edition. The only downside is the fact you have to put a lot of effort into keeping it cool, although 2.8 to 3.0GHz should now be attainable on an AMD quad-core processor.

Those into massive multi-tasking or highly threaded applications will benefit the most from a quad-core processor, but even with AMD's massive steps forwards, we still feel the Q6600 is the slightly better purchase, regardless of the small £10 price difference. Both can be overclocked, but the Phenom X4s are much hotter and less tolerant to heat in comparison. At just over 60˚C our Phenom at 2.8GHz was stable, but at just under 70˚C it locked up.

If you can keep it cool then it should really work for you, however even with an expensive, large and very capable ZeroTherm cooler we still couldn't keep it cool at a quite reasonable 1.45V. Admittedly 65nm Core 2 Quads are hot runners at high voltage too, but they seem to be more tolerant of higher temperatures and the Intel 65nm process seems to leak less current.

What AMD is missing is a K10 dual core – its mainstream 65nm parts are being revamped, but slowly, and they are still based on the old K8 core so Intel is leaving them far, far behind. I don't understand it – why push a new process technology onto the most complex parts first? Why aren't we seeing new, lower wattage, high clocked dual-core processors?

Regardless of that, AMD Enthusiasts should have some fun with the Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition and it’s good to see AMD “back in the game.” Hopefully with some elaborate watercooling or phase change setups (pictures in the forums, please!) we should see some pretty awesome overclocking endeavours, and what’s more, for around £150 it's something most of you can afford to enjoy.

AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

AMD Phenom X4 9750

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

AMD Phenom X4 9550

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

What do these scores mean?