Phenom TLB Errata Workaround Explored

[moshpit]

The Tech Report has re-reviewed Phenom 9600 with the TLB workaround bios installed, and the results are not pretty at all. Looks like the 10% performance loss AMD has been cautioning is actually a low estimate.

We have been following the story of a chip-level problem in AMD's quad-core Opteron and Phenom processors all week. This bug—CPU makers prefer to call them errata—can cause system hangs in specific, rare circumstances. This sort of obscure problem is not really uncommon in microprocessors, but CPU makers are often able to fix them on the fly with little impact to the end user. This particular erratum is especially unfortunate because the fix for it involves sacrificing a substantial amount of performance.

Source: The Tech Report

[Android1]

A 30%+ performance decrease in certain benchmarks? Ouch.

[moshpit]

A 30%+ performance decrease in certain benchmarks? Ouch.

Certainly not good at all. Phenom has been a poorly executed launch in the grand scheme of CPUs, at least so far it has.

[nextbillgates]

A 30%+ performance decrease in certain benchmarks? Ouch.

Indeed. There are a few benchmarks where it loses to the dual-core Athlons.

And a 50%+ performance drop in Firefox? Wow. Just... wow.

AMD needs to either recall these chips, or sell them for 50-75% off.

[SteadVéx]

The TLB erratum is a big deal largely because of the standards CPU makers have established for themselves, in which utter stability is a guarantee, not an optional feature

I kinda fail to see the point of this cpu, this is purely for die hard fans who refuse to buy intel because they are 'evil', unless i'm missing something...
at least the older athlon's (i'm guessing) will be cheaper which still offer impressive performance

[Skynet]

I kinda fail to see the point of this cpu

K10 is a server chip by design. IF the thing was not obviously buggy, broken, and not ready for production (go ahead and flame me, but this is how I see Barcelona) then it has potential to excel in the server world. It (this is all in theory) has tremendous memory bandwidth, unmatched 4 core scaling, backwards socket compatibility, greatly enhanced features including SSEx performance, good power consumption, robust virtualization (Intel can't touch AMD here) etc. etc.

Too bad AMD was not able to deliver on all of the above. K10 should have been delayed by a few months for sure, but I guess AMD felt extreme pressure to execute their roadmap and launch.

...this is purely for die hard fans who refuse to buy intel because they are 'evil', unless i'm missing something...

Depending on your needs and wants. If a person is looking for an affordable dual core system, AMD is unmatched. AM2 motherboards are inexpensive and feature rich, and even lowest end dual core K8's overclock fairly easily.

But if someone like me wants out all performance, I can't go AMD. Maybe there's a reason Intel has not done a native quad yet, perhaps they decided it is not practical for mass production just yet (or it could be they had no native quad designs on the table until relatively recently)

Off to read the article