AMD Phenom X4 9750 Quad Core CPU Review

SuperPi

SuperPi calculates the number of digits of PI in a pure 2D benchmark and can do so upto 32M places. For the purposes of this review the seemingly standard 1M and 32M test runs will be performed. For many years now this program has the measuring stick for many an enthusiast. It may be getting long in the tooth but it is still a good way to judge how efficient your system is as many factors from CPU speed & efficiency to memory speed and timings can have a direct impact on the results. As with all tests our 4GB (2x2GB) Mushkin HP2 PC6400 Ram was in its default 5-5-5-15 2T for all systems.


AMD processors are notorious for needing tight as possible timmings to get the best performance out of them and the default of 2T timing really does hurt their performance and doesn’t do much to show off their integrated memory controller capabilities. Though loose timings or no we were expecting the numbers to be a lot closer than this. If we were running either of these AMD processors we certainly would take the time to tighten up the memory timings as that would certainly pay dividens. That being said AMD should know that most of their customers neither have the will nor the inclination to do this and should really have taken the time optimize their new memory controller for the general public.

wPrime

Unlike SuperPi, wPrime is a truly multi-threaded benchmark. The aim of the authors was to max out all you cores, regardless of the number by first determining how many cores your system has via CPU-Z and then using that number for the number of threads it will run. For our purposes both the 32M and 1024M tests were run on each of our tests CPUs.


Now these scores are more like it! The Phenom 9750 easily beats a Q6600 and can even give a q9450 a run for its money. When it comes to midrange quads and wPrime AMD Phenoms are the clear winner.