Were Phenoms as BAD as they say? AMD Phenom 9750 x4 vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - Quick Comparison

Quick Benchmarks of an AMD Phenom 9750 x4 2.4Ghz vs an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
Hardware Used:
Asus M4A780-EM
Intel D946GZIS
2x 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400
Asus GeForce 1030 2GB GDDR5
Crucial MX500 SSD
*All capped with a generic HDMI Capture device
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:25 Cpu's used
01:17 Passmark
01:31 7zip
01:43 Cinebench
02:02 Handbrake
02:17 Heaven
02:29 Superposition Loading Issue
02:47 Superposition
03:13 GTA IV
03:38 GTA IV Benchmark
04:24 GTA V
05:05 GTA Benchmark
05:39 KZbin Playback
06:15 Y-Cruncher
06:27 Graphs 1
06:53 Graphs 2 (Y-Cruncher)
07:18 Summary
#amd
#benchmark
#intel

[@Javadamutt]

The problem with the phenoms was QX6700 came out November 2006 (Q6600 was Jan 2007) While the first Phenom didn't arrive until November 2007 just shy of a year later. It was also running at only 2.2GHz on the B2 stepping. The Q6600 sat around £160 while the 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 matched it and the 2.3GHz 9600 around the £180 mark The 9750, 9850 were the B3 stepping versions that solved the TLB issue and didn't arrive until March 2008. By that time Intel had their Q9xxx quads out resulting in the Q6600 receiving a price drop to around £130-£140. From memory AMD had problems with the 65nm manufacturing which meant they struggled to produce chips and get good clocks. Yes as you show the 9750 was competitive against the Q6600, it was over a year behind Intel at that point and too expensive at launch. Intel could cut the Q6600 price and continued to fill out their line with more 65nn quads and even started releasing 45nm quads.

[@mart223421]

I couldn't agree more. It's a shame AMD didn't initially the B3 stepping as it would have paved the way for Phenom ll.

[@achaycock]

Yes, this is my memory of the situation as well. I had been looking forward to the Phenom, but did not upgrade until the Phenom II which gave a healthy performance at a good price. I did build a home server around the Phenom 9550 which was cromulant but AMD FX really tipped things over the edge for me as the early offerings could be outperformed by my Phenom II X6.

[@candle86]

@@achaycock I did upgrade back then, I went from my Athlon 64 x2 4600 to a Phenom x4 9600BE, it was a decent upgrade, I did it after B3 was out the the B2 chips where discounted I think i paid $80 on discount for it in 2009. Later in 2010 I replaced it with an Athlon II X4 640, I'd say I got my money's worth out of that AM2 motherboard lol

[@homelessEh]

good things come to those who wait :P

[@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023]

The performance was good but it had this TLB bug and my 9600 completely died last year. The mainboard works with another CPU. But where the Intel shines is OC. The Phenoms are locked and don't OC very well.

[@NicholasHenkey]

If I recall correctly, at launch the Phenoms performed worse than the Q-series due to years of Intel-focused software optimization. It's nice to see that the Phenom line aged like fine wine

[@jims_junk]

I remember something to that as well

[@nimrodery]

You could also OC the Core 2 Quads pretty easy to well over 3 GHz, I was using one of these as my main rig not too long ago.

Phenom had a terrible cache problem at the launch , so just as it came out they patched it costing 15-20 percent performance. AMD never recovered from that.

[@dom3827]

Phenom still did not age like fine wine. Their chipsets till today just have Beta support for AHCI and is not working. Which means you can have an SSD, but yea, at the speed of a HDD since the buggy chipset. And Phenom was very unstable at higher temps. For OC you needed very good cooling not exceeding 70°C at best. Still have a Phenom 2 x6 1100 BT on a Asus Crosshair Formula 4 Mainboard. But not using it.

[@StaelTek]

@@nimroderywith some higher clocked Quads, paired with a decent motherboard, +4 GHz is very possible, but mostly held back by how far you can go with the FSB speeds, limited by either motherboard, CPU, or both.

[@blkspade23]

Now that I think about it AMD CPUs have had a fairly consistent history of feeling smoother in multitasking. I'd built a number of Athlons way back, and my computers offered a snappier desktop experience pretty much all the Intel's at work. That includes when Apple transitioned to X86, and my AMD64 hackintosh was faster than actual Macs. FX series being actually pretty bad had me on 4790K, which suck to use under load. The need for more than 4 cores, moved me right back to AMD with a Ryzen 2700.

[@dom3827]

Switched from AMD to intel in 2018. Made a complete different experience. Intel feels much more snappier for me.

[@MattX28025]

I still use a phenom II X6 in an older PC. Still works great.

[@homelessEh]

same got a 1045t and a 550 unlocked to a quad that'll hold 3.6ghz on stock cooler....and recently actually opted for a good package deal on a fx8350 set crosshair v mobo/good tower cooler 16gb of hyperx. all for under 50$... sure its fx8350 its fine! ITS FINE..

[@derealized797]

I picked up an old PC at a flea market for $40, had a GTX 260 SOC which i swapped out for a RX 580, and a Phenom II X6 1075T. It holds up better than i expected. Then someone donated 12gb of DDR3 RAM which i put to use, and it does well enough for me. I prefer older games as well as mostly indie games. It'll hold me over as i save up and plan my next build. I'm not rich.

[@evandrochaves9596]

used it till 2018 on a terrible mobo, saw that it was bottlenecking a lot my r7 265, besides that was really fine but then the chance to get a cheap i7 3770 system made me retire it

[@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023]

@@evandrochaves9596 I once made a ultrabudget system for someone using the 1045T, it isn't very good for modern games. The power draw is very high. Nowadays I would always go Ryzen, you can get a R5 1600 between 10 and 20 €.

[@thefanmanSixtyFour]

I've still got a system with a phenom ii x6 1065t and it outperforms a system I've also got that has an i7 870 but I found that the phenom performs cooler despite being amd am3.

[@mrvomit101]

I feel you deserve more attention, you clearly put effort into these videos and they're a great watch.

[@1337Ox]

I agree, KZbin just recently started recommending me these videos, and I am always tempted to watch it, it's interesting and good to remind me how gaming was back then

[@DannyDan09]

I just said something similar in comments on one of his other vids. Not sure how there aren't a lot more subscribers.

[@mrvomit101]

@@DannyDan09 Yeah, it's surprising how he doesn't have a lot more, it's good, quality content.

[@zachbeckner]

I agree

[@KuruGDI]

Regarding the price: I don't know the for sure, but the Phenom lineup was indeed at least 30% cheaper than the intel CPUs. So the price does not seem to be that off.

[@picklerick814]

i used to have a phenom 9850 black edition and a 9800GTX+. only like 8 years later I found out how my CPU was throtteling my graphics card when I tried running BioShock Infinite on an i5 with the same old 9800GTX^^ phenom 1 was bad and ran really hot. my brother had a phenom 2 and it was really good for several years.

[@windowsuser321]

I have a Phenom 9850 sitting on my desk right now. Pulled it from an ASUS board (the board was dead, though. I didn't just waste a working system) that I ripped out of an Antec 1200 case and replaced with a Haswell board a while back. Probably going to just toss it though...

[@crusader2.0_loading89]

Always wondered why phenom had such bad reviews...I still have one and it still works fine for my needs

[@Trick-Framed]

It was the time period. Most apps or programs were running on a single thread still and the OSes of the time didn't handle multi core well. I mean, Windows 11 handles multi core better than Windows 10 for instance. This was back during the Vista to Windows 7 years. Multicore was for servers. The average consumer still had a P4. If you look at the core designs in the beginning of the video you realize why the Phenom was and is the better gaming and multi core chip. It was designed way better. To top that off that beefy L3 cache. It is prime for alot of today's software due to it. Too bad it lacks AVX and AVX 2.

[@homelessEh]

gen 1 phenom still better then.. the athlon 5350 am1 apus.. now the Am1 apus THEY were Truly terrible.. short lived short sighted and quickly discontinued. makes socket fm1 look successful with its inability to surpass 4 cores on a chip.. so weird how fm1 belly flopped so hard i mean the am3 platform was older and even tho its not a true 8 core fx8120/8350 existed.. why could am1 and fm1 not achieve 8 threads.. altho that was the times amd was just Hemoraging money just to keep a "current Dated" product on a shelf.

[@zqzj]

I had a Q6600 overclocked to 4.1 GHz back in the day. Those processors were bad ass!

[@jims_junk]

Agreed! I worked IT in a school district. We had a few dozen Q6600 Lenovo desktops donated back in 2011'ish . I came to find out that all had already been overclocked to 3ghz using the taped pin mod. At first I was a little concerned about their stability. However I went in on a weekend to do some work, found a lab still powered up with no AC running. The room was easily 120F. Every computer was running perfect although their fans were deafening. The Core2 cpu's were insanely good for their time. Even our Xeon servers that used this core were rock solid.

[@MusicHavenSG]

Would love you see you test the Phenom II X6 1100T!

[@TylerDurden-oy2hm]

thats a boss cpu dude

[@virtualtools_3021]

Only thing that really holds it back is lack of sse 4.2

[@Zourkoskey]

Yes I loved mine a great cpu lastest me 10 years still going strong in my old pc.

[@PorscheRacer14]

Ahhh yes. Not the fastest gaming CPUs around, but the Phenoms were cheap. Got my dad a tri-core and unlocked the fourth core while only needing a minor voltage bump. I had a 1055T that OC'd like a champ. Unfortunately my Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 wasn't long for the world after overclocking competitions and the system ended up being parted out. Was a shame because it had so many good memories attached to it and made for a great server to learn on and test VMs with. Ever since then I've never been below 6-cores. Love the look back on these classics. One thing that remained consistent for a long time was the socket shape and area around it. You could have had a large tower cooler or custom water block from socket 939 or 940 (AM2) and carried it forward over how many generations with maybe only a retention bracket change. *When I mean not the fastest gaming CPUs, this is from gaming benchmarks for competitions but there's controversy around those benchmarks and Intel's compiler at that time.

[@mytech6779]

The phenom smoothness comes from the far superior memory interaction. The L3 cache and superior main memory bus interface. FSB design was a large advantage AMD had over Intel for many years, even 10 years earlier, AMD had a 32b FSB and Intel still used 16b FSB. Which is a large part of why the original 32bit Athlon line was able to match intel performance at much lower clock speeds eg athlon 2700 xp at 2.2ghz single thread, was equivilent to a pentium4 3.1ghz with hyperthreading.

[@firephoenix2726]

Infos about FSB are completely wrong. Nearly all CPUs from Pentium onwards are using a 64Bit FSB ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front-side_bus ). As well known the bad per clock performance of P4 was because of it's architecture which was optimized for high clock speeds but not for high performance/clock. Nevertheless the Athlon 2700XP has no chance against a P4 3.06 with HT. Even the 3200+ XP struggles against this CPU. Situation changed with A64. In fact the high FSB of P4 even helped these CPUs a bit, if you combine them with Rambus memory (sdram and even ddr266 memory without dual-channel was to slow to bottleneck the FSB). Funfact: Last Intel CPU with 16Bit "FSB" (databus) was 386sx

[@Obie327]

Informative video Jim, That hyper transport link with the Phenom helps it a lot. I actually build one of these years ago for a friend on a budget. Thanks for the comparison!

[@jims_junk]

Thanks I appreciate that. Yeah even though I owned one back then, I forgot how good they really were.

[@exaltedb]

My first gaming pc has a phenom II X4 810 in it and that chip, even in 2015 still had some semblance of life left in it I think the 9750 pulled away from the q6600 due to its cache design and the fact it’s a true quad core. Having more cache as well as having the cores talk more freely really helps with memory bandwidth and keeping the cpu fed

[@Feuebringer]

L can. Utcll

[@yosuhara]

very nice comparison, looking forward for more! 👏

[@Aduke95]

Impressed by the result ! Now to say it, a Q6600 is overclockable in any machine you want (since it support 333MHz FSB) and grab 25% more performance from it. And stay stable. Using the BSEL mod method.

[@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r]

It depends heavily on the stepping though the G0 chips were great, B steppings not so much.

[@galier2]

And people would get rridiculed when they talked about the "smoothness" of the AMD CPU in comparison to Intel. The integrated memory controller made a world of difference in comparison to the easily saturated FSB of the Core2. Your benchmarks show it quite compellingly. At the time these cpu's were brand new most publications had very selective benchmarks that would always show intel in favorable light. It was frustrating as it was not difficult to see through the bias.

This comparison is bad, the Q6600 is 1 year old at Phenom 9750, the real competitor of Phenom 9750 is the Core2 Quad Q9xxx/Q8xxx series, and the result is very sad for the phenom.

[@Aruneh]

This channel really isn't helping my addiction to buying all the CPU's I didn't own back when they were new. :) Back when I got my Q6600 (that I still own) the Phenom wasn't even my radar, I never even considered buying it. Guess I should have!

[@RudolfSikorsky]

I used Phenom II X4 955 for 5 years and it performed admirably. First time I saw it struggle a bit was in Dragon Age Inquisition in 2014. And not with a game itself but loading times were incredibly long. That's when I upgraded to FX 8350 and actually using it until today as my secondary computer for 1080p gaming as some older games have UI scaling problems and are near impossible to play on my 4k main rig.

[@kyleglasgow007]

Great content & good simple presentation. The Phenom 1 series was very underrated. I had both briefly around this time & even when they went to the die shrink on the C2Q, I didn’t like it quite as much. I felt that the Phenom 1 definitely aged better. I had plenty of time to overclock both & while generally my OCing experience was much better on the Phenom II chips that I had, the overall usage & lifespan was better on Phenom I. Phenom II was really competitive towards the end of its life in my experience. I was able to get Phenom II X4 965 BE for a hair over $120 new in box regularly which was a wayyy better value than an i5 750 or late production C2Q. I’d love to see Phenom II revisited as well.

[@CougarCat21]

Nice review. Love the Phenoms, having a 3-cores Heka cpu.

[@davieS628]

Thanks! Your video helped me decide to upgrade an old computer to the Phenom 9750 x4 over purchasing an Core 2 Quad system for a simple media server.

[@jims_junk]

👍

[@Fredisaviewer]

I'm really glad.you posted this. I was just researching how Phenoms compared to the Chips Intel was putting out around the same time a few days ago. As you had stated and as I had discovered, most press back then was very skewed away from the Phenom. Back when the time these processes were out, i was only using Intel. Prior, during the Athlon years, I was using Athlons. I was pretty exclusive to AMD chips going back to around 1996. So I was disappointed a bit when I had felt (based on the press at the time) that AMD had dropped the ball so badly. Yes, there were problems when they first released, but for the first time (thanks to this video) I see that AMD ended up bouncing back on the performance front. Incidentally, I ended up staying on Intel Chips until the Ryzen 5800 came our. It took till then for me to feel the Ryzen had matured through its progression to the point where I really felt AMD was providing not only the better processor, but the better bang for the buck at that time.

[@GetJesse]

Would have been nice if AMD kept building on the Phenom II architecture rather than the Bulldozer diversion they took in our timeline.

[@TheLucidDreamer12]

In some ways, bulldozer was intended to be what Phenom II always was supposed to be. However, the integer core shared cache architecture was really what knee-capped the performance of the FX chips

[@hellbound83]

A excellent comparison & overview! In a future video could you compare the Phenom Tri-core and Intel Core 2? I remember fan boys arguing over which one was better for gaming. I also appreciate you including the launch price and when they were released. That information often gets left out but can actually be relevant.

[@jims_junk]

Sure! Soon as I get my hands on one I'll throw it up.

[@ProcessedDigitally]

amazing retro series. keep it up.

[@DannyDan09]

Agreed! Quick and to the point but still very interesting.

[@bubbabenali]

Never heard anyone talking bad about the Phenoms. On the contriary people praised them after AMD released the Bulldozers.

[@titan_fx]

This is the OG Phenom though, not the Phenom II. Phenom II is the one that people compare against FX cpus. 1st Phenom was rather underwhelming against Intel Core 2 compared to Athlon 64 X2 vs Pentium Ds. That's why people were slightly disappointed with these processors.

[@exaltedb]

@@titan_fx the phenom II was still notably better per clock compared to FX

[@titan_fx]

@@exaltedb yes, in some cases the older Phenom II can be better than FX. The problem with Phenom II is the lack of SSSE3 and SSE4 support, Phenom II doesn't have these instructions which limits their usefulness. FX and Core 2 processors do have these instructions sets, that's why FXs and C2Q 9xxx series last longer as "Potato CPU".

[@homersimpson8955]

@@exaltedb To me GTA 5 was a reason to abandon Phenom II and go with FX. FX 8370 was much, much faster in GTA 5. So if task was heavy multi-threaded FX was much better. But in old single threaded or just 4 threaded games, yep Phenom II was faster.

[@TheLucidDreamer12]

@@titan_fx FX is also ageing way better than their Intel competition because their higher core count, despite the shared resources, are still physical and not logical cores

[@LegendaryPhenom]

Pheom II series were amazing, i had the Phenom II 720 X3 which unlocked to 955 X4. Phenom 97XX never got any love, probably due to the bug and low clocks. Now it seems they weren't that bad when they released, why all the hate then?

[@lesto12321]

same here! it was my very first own PC, with my very first paycheck. It is still around here, I was thinking reviving it as a media center or similar with maybe a low end gpu, but probably a modern cheap system is much better on power consumption.. need advice

[@danielkowalski7527]

@@lesto12321 Thats why i swapped my phenom 2 x6 to i3 9100 - to halve power consumption ^^

[@titan_fx]

1st Phenom never got the spotlight due to underwhelming performance against early Core 2 processors. Compared to Athon 64 X2 that slaughtered Intel's Pentium D, surely Phenom I is a disappointment. Phenom II these days lacks SSSE3 stepping, which most modern games now require in order to play. Core 2 had SSSE3, and that's why the Q6600 is so popular as a potato pc CPU. 😁

[@galier2]

Both my Phenom II 720 X3 2.8Ghz (unfortunately not unlockable) and my 1095T X6 (Turbo to 3.6GHz) are still absolutely useable as secondary PC's nowadays.

[@lesto12321]

@@galier2 used it until 2019 when i upgraded to ryzen 3600! but the secondary pc must be sipping power, i pay almost 0.4 euro per kw/h!

[@REPOMAN24722]

I had a 9550 BE and then went to a Phenom II x4 955, day and night, I think it was the low clock and cache on the original phenoms. Was running a 4870x2 then.

[@Protoking]

The OG Phenom had a TLB bug. The Translation Lookaside Buffer had to be bypassed causing a good deal performance hit. I believe a 15% performance hit at least to the IPC. Not all of the OG Phenoms had this bug certain models had this fixed in later revisions.

[@burnitdwn]

I ran a Phenom for a while back in the day. Ran a 2nd gen Phenom 2 for a while as well. When the Phenoms came out, Intel dropped prices on the Q6600, but, it was still a pretty big price difference I believe. The Q6600 was very popular among enthusiasts in part due to its overclockability. People would get often 3.5ghz or more with a q6600. I believe the 9750 Phenoms usually maxed out under 3ghz. Either way, I agree that the Phenoms were not bad. In General they were decent "bang for the buck".

[@mitch075fr]

AMD's Phenom family suffered from L2 cache problems when going past 2.4 GHz, thus why it was soon replaced by the Phenom II and its little brother, the Athlon II. The latter's entry level quad core processor, the X4 620, was a MONSTER for overclocking : you could increase its clock speed by 600 MHz without touching the voltage, you only needed to cool it down properly. It kicked the pants of the Core 2 Quad - provided you had good fast RAM. The only reason you can't use these processors anymore is because of the lack of SSE4.

[@Protoking]

Don't forget the Translation Lookaside Buffer bug that while eventually fixed sort of ruined the reputation of the line.

[@mitch075fr]

@@Protoking Athlon processors weren't affected, as they lacked L3 cache.

[@abruptlyblunt]

i'm glad to see some finally give the phenoms their due, back in those days the shop i was working at sold nothing but custom builds, i was building 5-10 machines a day and everybody wanted intel but for my personal machine i had my choice and i always chose amd, still do......

[@robertpintaric7354]

I was shocked by title, but you proved what had to be proven. Its funny how time distorts the truth, now people talk phenoms are bad but in reality they are the same if not better than C2Q of the time period. I remember tests from back then and they where always good cpu-s.

[@Alexandras_Demirovic]

Keep up the work. You are going good.

[@kpanic23]

In 2009 I treated myself to a new gaming rig. I intended to go with an Intel, but the motherboard I wanted was on backorder, so I went AMD instead. Got an Asus M3N-HT Deluxe board (nVidia nForce chipset), 8GB of DDR2-1066 RAM, an AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE and a Geforce GTX 280. Storage was 4x 750GB HDDs in RAID0, all powered by a 1000W Corsair power supply. OS was Windows XP x64 Edition. It was a really great rig for the time! Especially when coming from a socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+ with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon X850 XT AGP...

[@andrewthelpt]

Hey there, new subscriber to your channel, plz include frametime graphs in your videogames runs, it really helps to see smoothness of gameplay clearly

[@jims_junk]

Ok

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. Hmm.. I wonder what a fast ddr3 set-up would do for the Q6600.. (I don't think AM2+ supported DDR3?) And a little piece of tape for a BSEL mod gets the Q6600 to 3ghz on 99.9% of motherboards, even OEM's. Getting a Phenom 9750 to 3ghz takes a MUCH better motherboard and some skills.

[@CMDRSweeper]

From what I remember of memory back in those days, the memory speeds and type didn't matter much. DDR2 vs DDR3 didn't really give that much of a difference on the same platform, but did have a much higher price tag, and later on, you still had to rebuy the same DDR3 memory anyway because of Intel's integrated memory controllers would fry and blow up if you put gen 1 DDR3 in them. (1.8V vs 1.65V limit for first gen i7s)

[@mart223421]

Hi Jim, would you be able to compare the Phenom II against the Core 2 quad 6000 and 9000 series? I think that would be an interesting comparison!

[@jims_junk]

Sure. I'm actually looking for a 9000 series core2quad for another vid, so that'll be something I could also do. Thanks for the idea.

[@mart223421]

@jims_junk No problem. I remember the Phenom II being quite competitive with Core 2. AMD only had a short window of being competitive before first gen i5 and i7's came out. I always wanted an 1100T!

[@Blzut3]

As at least one other comments points out, glossing over the B2 vs B3 stepping likely the key that paints a very different picture here. The Phenom's reputation was tarnished by the TLB bug that the original 2007 B2 stepping had, but that's fixed in the 2008 B3 chips (most of which have new model numbers ending in 50 I think). Edit: Oh and while the Wikipedia pricing is typically accurate, it's worth nothing that Wikipedia documents the launch price. Probably since AMD was competitive the prices dropped rapidly on the Core 2 Quads. I don't remember what I paid for my Q6600, nor can I remember if it was 2007 or 2008, but it was in the ball park of $250.

[@zachbeckner]

I remember him saying either in this video or others, that the pricing he uses is launch price. Everyone knows it drops but later sale prices are different depending where you are and where you shop.

[@Blzut3]

​@@zachbeckner That was in response to him saying he's not sure how accurate the wikipedia pricing is in this video. I happen to be one of the people who have collected that info from archived press releases and what not. (At least until wikipedia editors recently have decided that pricing is out of scope and started sadly removing it.) I don't have any particular qualms about the way launch pricing was used here. Although when there is a large difference between the launch price and the typical purchase price, like was the case with the Q6600 when it was a popular choice, it can make the prices seem inaccurate.

[@Mini-z1994]

The core 2 quads later in response too AMD's cpu's dropped too around 220 - 230 usd i believe. Think it was around April 2008 so not a bad purchase really going with either if you were building a pc at the time.

[@conroypawgmail]

I retired my mother's AMD Phenom 9850 X4 about two years ago. (I replaced her PC with one of those HP Prodesk 600 G4 Mini PCs with an Intel Core I5.) I still have the CPU, but the motherboard's capacitors were bulged and leaking which was why the PC was replaced. I had used it as my main PC for about a year or two before immediately upgrading the an AMD Phenom II X4 940. It was in use practically about everyday for about 12 years. I remember being a little disappointed that AMD couldn't live up to the hype and that most of the reviews at the time put the Intel Core 2 Quad ahead of the Phenom. Still, I wasn't going to go team blue anytime soon. It still beat the pants off of the Pentium IV, that I had at work, and when that got upgraded to a Core 2 Duo, my Phenom was still noticeably faster. I'm probably more of an AMD fanboy than I care to admit, but I've been using CPUs from all companies. My 286 was made by Fujitsu, I believe. My 386DX40 was by AMD. My 486DX2 66 was Intel. I had Intel Pentiums 120, 150, 166, 200 MMX, 233MMX, Pentium Pro 200, a couple of AMD & Cyrix 5x86, and when Intel went over to Pentium IIs, I couldn't afford that, so I stayed with AMD's K6s, Eventually, I did own a Celeron and Pentium III (socket 370), and I would build an Core I7 3770k, but I stuck with AMD, even through the dark days of FX Bulldozer and Piledriver. Today, I have multiple Ryzen systems... but the retro PC bug bit me, so I might have to dig out the K6-3 450 or maybe find an AM2 board for the 9850. I have to say, this video on the 9750 has made me feel a whole lot better about my purchase, than what I was feeling 14 years ago. 😄 Subscribed. I'm looking forward to more of your content.

[@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023]

The 9000 Phenoms are relatively acceptable for office tasks, I noticed it when the 9600 that was in my cellar PC broke and I got a Athlon X2 for free. PDF load several seconds and everything is incredibly slow.

[@mart223421]

I think the Phenom just had a bumpy start because of the B2 stepping that was first released. 2.2Ghz just wasn't enough to be competitive with Core 2. If AMD had released the B3 right off the bat then it would of allowed them to remain competitive until Phenom II arrived. I ended up building a Q6600 back in the day as I was too impatient to wait for Phenom. The Phenom series was definitely an underrated series.

[@jims_junk]

I totally agree. Had a phenom back in the day as well as working with Core2Quads. My Phenom was phenomenal for gaming. Everyone was complaining about GTA IV being slow and buggy, yet it ran perfect on my computer. I never understood what the problem was.

[@stephen5224]

This video is very interesting. Well done.

[@PCartCast]

The problems with the core2quad are the FSB and the external memory controller. The Front Side Bus (FSB) is a huge bottleneck, with a FSB of 1333Mhz you get 10.6GB/s of bandwidh, and its not even a dual sided bus like QPI or DMI, if you ad and external memory controller (on the chipset) on top of that it going to be a Huge bottleneck, because de cpu ddepends on the FSB o accesss the memory, since those 10.6GB/s need to be enought to send an receive data from the memory controller, at the same time the cpu needs to send data to the GPU. The Phenom had an integrated memory controller and Hypertransport was so much better than FSB. A simple comparison, whille the core2quad was strugling to manage the FSB bandwidh, the Phenom had a dedicated channel from the CPU to the memory, and was only using the Hypertransport to send data to the GPU.

[@evandrochaves9596]

i'm interested to do the same test since I own those processors, and also wish I could make a phenom II x6 1100T BE vs qx9775 but unfortunately these I dont have

[@lokeung0807]

Was a Core 2 Quad user, bought after Q6600 drop to US$266 (as I remember) It was a beast!

[@jims_junk]

I agree. They really were!

[@MelindaSordinoIsLiterallyMe]

lol CPUs really haven't gotten that much more expensive. CPUs, both from AMD and Intel, in the same performance bracket still cost around 250, maybe a bit more.

[@tejaspadhye]

the refined hardware design on the phenom really pays off in intense and situations when time is short, like a gpu waiting on the cpu to tell the next frame to render or you opening chrome while updating gta v.

[@awilliams1701]

I had a positive view of them, but I wanted an intel as my main computer for the first time. I recall I was left with the impression the fastest phenom was about the same as the slowest core 2 quad, which is what I had, and I defintely 100% recall the prices being equal. From what you're showing the pheonom seems to be slightly ahead on performance. I also remember the core 2 quad had caching issues due to separate dies. To get around this games with a poorer frame rate I would set the afinity to CPU 2&3 only and in realtime. that would reduce the caching issues. It helped a bit as far as I can recall. But after having a gaming laptop outperform my desktop I decided to upgrade to an i7-2600. At that point there was no more competition. Pheonom was the last AMD CPU I had a good impression of before Ryzen. I wonder how these tests would be affected if you did the affinity trick I mentioned. I suspect it probably isn't as much as I recall.

[@EinSwitzer]

after modding the motherboards and soaking the chip substrates in gel heat to dry then cleaned to use made them faster then current and has been helping drive current development since.

[@paulbarnett227]

I had a Phenom X4 back in the day. I ran Windows 7 on it. It was a good CPU. A friend of mine had the Q6600.

[@Ngamer834]

Back in the day I built my Q6600 system when the prices had dropped. The Q6600 was famed for its overclocking ability and this was one of its selling points. Some reason my Q6600 couldn't be overclocked to the kind of clocks others were achieving. Still did all what I wanted I was playing Flight simulator X at the time it was far smoother than my old Athlon X2 system.

[@pettttson]

what about an i5 750 vs phenom ii x4 955 comparison?

[@jims_junk]

First gen i5 or i7 is in the Todo list. I personally had a bad experience with mine so wanna see if it was a bad board or if they really suck that bad.

[@christiangomez2496]

I'm currently to upgrade a PC to a q8400 from the original Celeron 450 so it can run better. Only issue would be thermals as it's an SFF.

[@rrrrexx]

Could you make graphs from 0, there is no issue if values look identical

[@agsel]

But will the Phenom do 3 GHz with a bit of tape on stock vcore even in pretty much any OEM motherboard?

[@jims_junk]

This is true. The q6600s seem happy to do it too. Perfect stability.

[@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023]

I did 3.8 on the X6 on a 4 phase board but I wouldn't do that in the long run. If you get it for free and just want to experiment you can do it, but expect these ancient boards to blow. The VRMs didn't even have a heatsink.

[@JoshVennix]

You should cover platform details. Memory and GPU specs etc.

[@brevillekambrook]

Agreed. Footage of the test set-up and details on other hardware used would be a great addition

[@MatthewKiehl]

These two processors are my current minimum recommendations for Windows 10 (use at least a quad core). Though an Athlon 64 (or a reasonable dual core) can do it for a basic file storage and transfer.

[@RikuKawai]

Likely what you're seeing here is a similar situation to the Pentium D and Athlon 64. Core 2 Quads are also MCM designs with two Core 2 Duo dies which communicate over the frontside bus which causes issues for interdie communication. The Phenom II X4 however is a monolithic quad core design with uniform memory access and communicates within the die over the much faster hypertransport (the predecessor to the modern infinity fabric). To clarify what I mean by communicating over the frontside bus, a core 2 quad functions like a dual socket system. Data exchanged between the dies has to leave the CPU and reach the northbridge before returning to the socket. A core 2 quad CPU installed in a system not meant to support one will sometimes operate in single die mode with only 2 of the 4 cores present, this is particularly common in laptops which may not supply the power rails for the second die.

[@gippygames]

Did anyone keep these CPUs at stock? The Q6600 was able to OC to either 3GHz (333x9), 3.2GHz (400x8), or with great cooling and luck, 3.6GHz (400x9) via the FSB. The Phenom 9750 could go up to 2.8GHz, but 3GHz seemed like a miracle. Would've been nice to see you push both CPUs instead of keeping them at stock.

[@jims_junk]

I sure as hell didn't. All q6600's I had at work were all overclocked to 3ghz with the tape mod. Usually I and others are against that for office/workplaces, but they were so damn stable while overclocked there was no reason not to. As I said before, this was meant to be what they could do stock who was better right off the shelf.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

One issue with the design of the Core2 Quads, will always be that the individual die had to communicate with each other over the FSB, as they did with the Pentium D or do on SMP setups - which really sucks . BTW one thing I noticed a while ago is that both Xeon X5450 and E5450 at 3.6GHz felt far smoother under Windows 7 (with both web browsing and gaming) compared to a QX6850 at 3.6GHz (1 of the die also ran 10 degrees hotter). I personally see the first C2Q as "we did it first" rather than a serious attempt at making something truly new, due to how tightly integrated a Phenom is by comparison.

[@terrapinflyer273]

Huh! Maybe I will upgrade my Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2.7ghz Brisbane) to a Phenom II X4 955 (95W) or B97. Pretty sure my mobo accepts the Phenom in the vid too. I did not think it would be able to run GTAV. Still not sure if I should go w the 955 or the B97. My mobo has a 95W tdp limit, so I'm thinking the B97 just to be on the safe side. Basically identical chips afaict. Though one website lists it running at .03 less frequency than the 955 lol. Dunno what that's all about. Only drawback (aside from the cpu being very old and lacking several modern features) is that my mobo only accepts up to 2x2GB DDR2-800/1066. But you better believe I'm gonna pop 2 4GB sticks in there just to make sure. Can't trust those old manuals and spec sheets. I mentioned my mobo was AM2/AM2+ and someone in a Discord server pitied me, thinking I was stuck on Bulldozer. No no! Earlier than that! LOL. Seriously not that bad tho. I'm able to run some very good indie games (Hollow Knight, Steamworld Dig 2, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, etc etc) max, 1080p. And several PS3/360 era titles just the same. And running Steam on Lubuntu 20.04 gives it the extra headroom it needs for a few native linux titles to run smoothly. Anyways... Thanks for taking the time to do all this! And here I was envying the C2Q over Phenom.

[@jims_junk]

No prob. They are both great cpus. I wanna do another, overclocking them each with their stock heatsinks to see which goes higher and which wins. Gotta get a better 775 board though first.

[@Space_Reptile]

my first proper from scratch build used a Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition, it turned out to be a lemon as it hardly overclcoked (500mhz oc on a prayer) but it served me well for roughly 5 years before being retired for a FX build wich was switfly replaced by a Ryzen Build

[@C4nn15]

What I loved my phenoms, I had the Q9850 Black edition that think kicked rear end

[@jims_junk]

I had one back then too and I loved it. At work we used duo's and quads which were great. But for home use you could overclock the snot out of the phenom and it ran much cheaper than any of the Intels.

[@alpzepta]

Low cache and low clock on the top black edition model let down the OG Phenom I think. But I still have fun with AMD Phenom it’s feel more special than a commons Core 2 Quad

[@homelessEh]

also gen 1 phenom in the bios there may be option to disable the tlb lookaside buffer fix.. "it may introduce an insability" but will give performance back

[@10WA]

The Phenom would have been a success if it wasn't a year behind. It wasnt necessarily bad value just late to the party. Wasn't around this time when Intel starting getting favored at the code string level or something like that. The software would see the pc had an Intel and use better instruction sets or something. I remember reading an artlcle how software companies were working with Intel and favoring their chips.

The real Comparison is: Phenom X4 9750 vs Core2 Quad Q9xxx/Q8xxx series.

[@jims_junk]

Actually looking thru eBay right now for that exact thing

[@xys007]

Were Meltdown and Spectre patches disabled ? Those patches hit Intel cpus performance more severely.

[@jims_junk]

yes

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Yeah, but considering the price of a Q9400 is now next to nothing, I replaced that Q6600, probably turn it into a paperweight. 🤣

[@nvidiaplay]

in poland i remember a lot of people praising phenoms and they were really popular

[@GGigabiteM]

What's not accounted for are all of the CPU vulnerability mitigations that Windows 10 has that didn't exist back in the day. These mitigations have significant performance penalties that are not equal across both Intel and AMD. A more valid test would be to either use Windows 7, or disable all of the vulnerability mitigations.

[@crosstech1]

If you don't mind me asking what kind of system do you use on a daily.

[@jims_junk]

its an i7 desktop and i5 laptop...not sure of the laptop but the desktop is an ivy bridge. Yes I know its older but until now its done what I needed. However editing has shown its age, so I'll probably be upgrading soon.

[@crosstech1]

@@jims_junk I was guessing something like that. I do tech stuff as well primarily around the ivy bridge Sandy bridge but now I am venturing into the x99 territory. I got to say if you're looking for an upgraded from a 3770k or 2600k. The 5930k or a 5960x is an absolute monster. I'm running a 5820k at 4.5 and even in the newest version of Vegas pro it is an absolute dream to edit with. There's been a lot of guys on KZbin recently talking about how x99 is the new go to budget platform and I couldn't agree more.

[@crosstech1]

@@jims_junk also I really do like your stuff. It's always fun watching videos about these older processors.

[@jims_junk]

@@crosstech1 Thanks! Yeah I need to do something soon and maybe I'll look into that, if anything as a interim pc for editing.

[@jims_junk]

@@crosstech1 Thanks I really appreciate that! I'm the same way, specially messing with old macs. The history is just so fascinating and messing with them again makes you feel a part of it.

[@Zishy]

there is a detail you are forgetting here... c2duos and c2quads were overclocking beasts. i had a c2d6600 that was running at 3.2ghz, a q9650 that was running 4ghz but was also running fine at 4.2. the phenoms didnt overclock that well and i dont know anybody that ran these cpus stock back in the day. it was very easy to overclock them and the binning was overall so good that even the lowend models would consistently clock 3ghz for the duos and later on up to 4ghz regardles of what cpu you got

[@RuruFIN]

First gen Phenom was bad. Phenom II was a totally different thing :)

[@Kurriochi]

nowadays it's the cache + true quad core design of the Phenom VS the SSSE3 support of the C2Q.

[@NightMotorcyclist]

While not a Phenom, my Athlon FX 6300 had served me well (when money became a bit of an issue) all the way up to 2019 when I built a brand new system utilizing a Ryzen 5 2400G which I've moved on to the 2600 then 5600X and 5800X3D. AMD's strength is that it performed well for the money spent and I was able to utilize the same motherboard for quite a while. My FX system was paired with a used Radeon HD 6970 (originally a 6950 but the unlocked BIOS restored the complete 6970 specs) that was able to play most of my games at the time at 1080p high settings. Sure, I would've loved to been able to afford an Ivy Bridge system but I felt I got more bang for my buck esp when you take used parts into consideration.

[@jims_junk]

I some how skipped the whole FX generation and have only heard bad things. I wanna see for myself so keep an eye out. It is on the Todo list.

[@NightMotorcyclist]

@@jims_junk the 6200 and 8200 was very lackluster and the Phenoms ran quite hot. The x300 line was an improvement but the 6300 was considered one of the better buys. I got mine used back in 2015 or so and because the guy managed to bend some of the pins I got it for a steal. It served me well enough into 2018 when I finally could build a brand new system.

[@jims_junk]

@@NightMotorcyclist thanks for the info I'll keep that in mind.

[@TimTomTem]

I used a phenom x6 about until a month ago it served me well I upgraded to a 7950x Quite the jump from a phenom x6 with ddr2 ram to ddr5 lmao.

[@derekbrewer9681]

I had a 9850BE and later a phenom II 920 and let me tell you I always thought they were better then the core 2 quads my friends got for a hell of a lot less cash.

[@amnergamez3931]

the problem for the phenom start when you overclock the 6600

[@Pasi123]

I still have a Q6600 BSEL modded to 3GHz in my HTPC

[@not1but2and37]

I play Counter Strike Source with this CPU, against 23 bots on LAN server. Getting about 100fps average windowed mode medium settings on Radeon 6870. Good enough for me just for nostalgia.

[@RedLine0069]

still have a 9950 black edition and it still works fine, not my main PC that is a ryzen 1700

[@Raymond-eo5gw]

i went from the 965 BE OC (3.66 vs 3.4STD) to a Ryzen 5 1600X. The Phenom II was great for running nearly a decade. Not max settings but I couldn't complain. FarCry 5 made me upgrade. I think the Phenoms are under rated. Ran with a Raid 0 strip setup (2 HDD), a FSB 10 mhz OC. I don't think we will hit an era in computing where you can have a processor stay somewhat relevant again.

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Great video

[@jims_junk]

Thanks!

[@boktorinator693]

exciting stuff

[@stefannilsson2406]

530 - 851 dollars for the Q6600? I mean, I never owned one, but from what I have heard from other people the Q6600 was kind of a budget core 2 quad. Would it have been 500+ dollars on the low end?

[@virtualtools_3021]

I wonder if that's after adjusting for inflation

[@stefannilsson2406]

@@virtualtools_3021 Maybe

[@talvisota327]

the price dropped pretty quickly. it was like 200ish dollars in early 2008

[@Mini-z1994]

It was at launch that much but Intel quickly dropped the Q6600 too around 300 usd July 2007. And down too around 224 - 230 usd late April 2008. From 266 usd & reduced further over time too 183 usd by the end of October 2008. Before it was phased out & no longer produced by I'd guess May 2009 with the first gen I7's & I5's on the 1156 platform arriving that year. The Q6700 was dropped too 266 usd i believe from around 530 usd that they kept up until April 21st 2008.

[@stefannilsson2406]

@@Mini-z1994 Thanks, but the i7 920 was on the 1366 socket. Same as the xeons and it had support for tripple channel memory.

[@IntegerOfDoom]

Interesting as I sort of skipped over this whole era.

[@WildShotZ14]

It's a shame that i've lost my phenom X4 9950 BE, that thing is a beast for it's age (and for it's power consumption as well😂) i remember OC'ing that thing to 3Ghz, it was a pretty rare cpu too these days

[@jims_junk]

Oh I hear ya. I had so many computers that I got rid of that looking back I wish I would have kept. Even had some dual Slot 1 pentium 3's. I remember dual 700mhz pentium 3's kicked the first and second gen pentium 4's butt.

[@Kboyer36]

I would love to see a comparison to the Pentium D and the Pentium Dual Core

[@jims_junk]

I can do that. Have a dual core. But spoiler, a pentium dual core is just a stripped down core2duo

[@Kboyer36]

@@jims_junk Would still be cool to see how a low clocked stripped down Core 2 would hold up to a high clocked Pentium D.

[@jims_junk]

Just FYI working on this now. Oddly enough the results are looking much closer than I originally thought.

[@Kboyer36]

@@jims_junk That's awesome that the results are not as expected. Can't wait to see the video.

[@luolisave]

I used some sort of 3 core AMD processor back then..... Is it AMD Phenom?🤪

[@jims_junk]

Possibly. They DID make a few tri core Athlon II's though as well.

[@josephdias5859]

if it was a comparison from the price point the core 2 quads would be going up against phenom x6s and being completely wiped off the board

[@jims_junk]

Agreed! Come to think of it that's a great idea. Maybe I'll pick one up and do that....just because.

[@agiftfromdracosfather3490]

Gotta say, for some reason, my brain finds it disorientating that you have the cpu names to the side instead of vertically

[@jims_junk]

Had em that way and people complained so I changed it. Newer vids have better colored arrows to help differentiate better

[@ShockingPikachu]

Again.... absolutely insane that we now get 8-core CPUs for less than both of these on their launch.

[@homelessEh]

heres tip "try the q6600 and phenom under "Windows 10 using Atlas 0s and Disable cpu vunerability fixes. you may find theses old cpus are being artificially held back by microsoft imposing cpu vunerability fixes that SAP some performance..

[@TierNoneOperator]

I had an Athlon x3 that I was able to unlock to a Phenom x4. I think I spent 50 bucks on the CPU in 2011. There was absolutely NO chance an Intel product was going to touch that kind of performance per dollar.

[@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023]

The unlocking was the true secret weapon of the Phenom IIs, also they were incredibly cheap. You could get a bundle with RAM and board for like 200 €. In 2024, you can hardly buy a CPU or board alone for that money.

[@128bz]

When testing games of the same time period cpus like the phenom 9550 could be even slower then a core 2 duo .

[@GoldenNada]

I mean it legit was even back then and this is first gen phenom I had a 1050 second gen with 6 cores matter of fact I still have it lol.

[@fenixlolnope361]

The platform and the release bug is what killed Phenom. AM2+ was a mess

[@independentthought3390]

I don't think anyone ran the Q6600 at stock speeds. It could easily overclock way past 3GHz. At those speeds, it would absolutely demolished any first generation Phenom.

[@fenixlolnope361]

Phenom just couldn’t compete on the high end. First gen lga1366 i7 are no joke even today.

[@honkhonkler7732]

If Phenom had performed like Phenom II on launch, AMD would have had a hit on its hands. K8 was a good architecture overall. They should have kept developing it instead of the braindead multithreading implementation they pushed for with Bulldozer. I think the marketing wanks trying to pass off those "modules" as cores made the situation even worse. The 8 Core FX chips were really more like 4c/8t chips in practice.. again with a garbage implementation of multithreading. Even looking at it like this, The top end FX chips were often edged out by Intel's midrange i5s that lacked hyper threading.