AMD Phenom X4 9600 Performance Preview

What Else is Launching Today - Spider and Other Things

The first "true" quad core CPU is soon to be available, but what else comes along with it? For the first time, desktop users get a platform designed around interoperability, performance and stability. Spider is a combination of the recently launched 3800 series video cards, a Phenom CPU, and a 790 series chipset. The ATi acquisition is finally beginning to look like a good move because AMD has secured the formidable graphics and chipset experience at ATi.

By using the Spider platform in a system, the end-user gets certain benefits that are otherwise not present, such as UVD support, Hypertransport 3.0 support, excellent tweaking capabilities with AMD’s new Windows-based overclocking utility, CrossfireX support, “true” quad core, and a variety of other benefits.

As mentioned before, although we’ve seen the AMD slides, we don’t have them so there are many other benefits, but we have to rely on our memories to recall the most important ones.


A couple of other important points to note about the Spider launch today is that the motherboards are already available (our 790FX motherboard is a retail one off the shelf), and CPU availability should be nearly immediate. That said, the Phenom X4 9500 (2.2GHz) is the only one that will be in plentiful supply. The Phenom X4 9600 (2.3GHz) will be available but in limited quantities, and the Phenom X4 9700 (2.4GHz) has been delayed.