AMD Phenom X4 9850 B3 Revision

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis and F.E.A.R. When testing processors with Crysis or F.E.A.R., we drop the resolution to 800x600, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible.  However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.

In both F.E.A.R. and Crysis, the new AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor was somewhat faster than the similarly clocked B2 revision chip.  Also note the huge performance penalty associated with running a B2 revision chip with the TLB patch enabled.  With the patch enabled a Phenom 9600, clocked 200MHz below the 2.5GHz chip is actually faster to a large degree.  In comparison to the Intel processors, the Phenom X4 9850 smokes the Q6600 in F.E.A.R., but falls behind in Crysis.