I almost feel sorry for AMD. I was embarrassed for them after looking at how the 9850 stacks up against the QX9650. It's sad that this is the best that AMD has to offer. Don't get me wrong, its performance isn't bad in relation to the Q6600, it's just that Intel is leading in performance by more than a fair margin and is soon to be in another league altogether with Nehalem. The most interesting thing I noticed here was the high power draw of the 9850 compared to Intel's processors. I thought these were supposed to sport energy saving technologies.

It's a shame they need to pump 125W through it.  They didn't have to do that on the X2 line until the 6000 iirc, and that's clocked at 3.0Ghz.  It seems AMD has already reached the limits with Phenom technology.  If they come out with a 9950, it'll be 2.6ghz by their naming scheme and even that's not anything powerful.

Intel is indeed moving by leaps and bounds over AMD.  Let's just hope the prices are reasonable on the Intel front.

It seems more than anything else AMD is trying to appeal to those mid-rangers.....We just got a tri-core in to BBY and honestly its not a bad bargain deal at all for the PC. If your ballin' on a budget these guys are a good 'bang for a buck' alternative

After reading the author's article I am left with the question of why he elected to compare the AMD 9850 revision B3 with the Intel Q6600?

My puzzlement arises from testing a 9850 B3 which runs at 2.5 ghz and is a current techhnology  i.e. March 2008 revision against an Intel Q6600 which runs at 2.4ghz and has been shipping since January, 2007.  I would like to see the comparison be made with the Intel  Q9300 which is the current model and also runs at 2.5ghz.  This test would be a fairer assessment of the relative merits of the two processors. 

 

 

I would assume the reason they chose to compare the performance of the 9850 against that of the Q6600 was because they probably didn't have a Q9300 on hand for comparison. The Q6600 would be the next closest chip in Intel's lineup to the 9850. Although the performance of the 9850 was comparable to that of the Q6600, taking into account the faster FSB speed of the Q9300, I presume it would have the upper hand. The Q6600 already had a substantial edge on power consumption, therefore the difference would only be that much more pronounced with the 45nm Q9300.

Plus, this AMD chip is ro retail around $230-$250, which is where the Q6600 is priced too.   The Q9300 is a little bit more, around $280-$300.