AMD Phenom X4 9750 Quad Core CPU Review

Efficiency

To us efficiency is the amount of power a given processor requires to do its job. Today’s processors are certainly becoming greener as they sip power levels so low they would have been nothing more than flights of fancy just a few years ago. It will be interesting to see how the unrefined and brand new k10 architecture stacks up when compared to both AMD highly refined K8s and Intel’s C2Ds.


Load levels and idle levels for the Phenom while not great but are not that terrible either. Overall, what these numbers tell us is that AMDs Phenoms are not refined and that AMD needs to take the necessary steps to make their quad core processors as environmental friendly as possible or they will be relegated to a niche market. However, if rumors of the die shrunk Phenoms are correct the k10 architecture may end up being the greenest of them all; so things maybe changing for the greener...soon.

Thermal Output

We could post a fancy graph showing exactly how hot a this Phenom “fireball” 9750 really is, but it would not exactly be fair; after all, it is a 125W TDP CPU and comparing it to cooler running chips is not an "apples to apples" comparison. For anyone who has not read the R-E-S-P-E-C-T section, you can take it on faith that this is not a cool runing chip and really shouldn’t be considered appropriate for HTPCs or any other less than optimal cooling situations. This core can in fact be considered a great candidate for both water cooling or even stress testing a CoolIT Boreas (and yes that is foreshadowing and you can expect a Boreas review in the future)!