Phenom 9500 on AM2 (NOT AM2+)

Thinking of slapping in a Phenom 9500 on my Asus m2r32-mvp.
How much performance will I be gaining over a AMD 5200+ Dual Core OCed to 3.0ghz.
How much performance will the 9500 be losing since its on a AM2 and not AM2+ board?

I currently run an AM2 board (asus M2A-VM) with a Phenom X4 9500. In order to use these new chips on an AM2 board, you need to ensure the board supports the cpu and has the most current bios. Check with the Asus site to ensure the M2R32-MVP supports it.

I have yet to see any significant gain with the faster HT speed. Im sure there is a certain benchmark or usage scenario that would present the difference in performance but Ive yet to see it. Perhaps someone else has some data they could share on the topic. If you wanted a safe estimate I dont think I'd put it much more than 5%. Most of the difference you'd be likely to see comparing an AM2 board and chipset to the newer AM2+ native boards would be most likely linked to chipset optimizations rather than the HT speed directly.

The performance of the 9500 is strong, but compared to a X2 at 3ghz, you may actually see a slight decrease in performance depending on your typical workload. I upgraded from a X2 at 2.6 to this 2.2 X4 and I noticed no slowdowns at all with the exception of scanning some of my mpeg files, small files (~1 hour) video files took about 2 minutes longer than with the X2, but larger files (2-5 hour) were faster at scanning and re-encoding on the X4. Also noticed a quite significant improvement with divx encoding, at times cutting encoding time nearly in half. My crysis cpu score dropped a bit (dont recall the exact numbers) but I am able to play the game while encoding my recordings, which is something I was not able to do previously.

So if your majority of workloads are gunna be single threaded and gaming oriented, then I would not suggest upgrading to the X4. You stand to gain little to no performance for that type of thing.
More multi threaded or quad core optimized games would see a fair increase, Bioshock is one game that I noticed an improvement. Image processing applications such as photoshop for large batch image work does give the phenom X4 the edge, which came in handy for me and my D100 I also noticed a rather large decrease in the time it took to stitch several images together into a panoramic image.

Folding at home was also a HUGE increase. My 2.6ghz X2 still folds for me, on average pulls in about 890ppd, where as my X4 typically pulls in close to 1800ppd, so its quite literally doubling ppd over the x2 2.6, so it will also be a significant increase over the 3ghz X2s.

In the review over at Tech Report, found here they compare the X4 9500 to the X2 5600, 6000, and 6400 (2.8/3.0/3.2ghz) and it will give you a good indication of performance.


So really it depends on your usage. My cpu usage never drops below 100% (24/7 folding, and I scan/encode video while I play my games) and I do not regret the upgrade at all, I can do things I never could have done with my X2. But if your just the average user who just surfs the web, listens to music, rips/burns the odd cd/dvd, and plays a lot of games I doubt the upgrade would be worth while for you. but on the other hand...it is only $189... But still, I would at least suggest waiting until the new phenom X4 processors launch in the coming weeks. These will be the B3 stepping and will have fixed the TLB bug that is present in ALL B2 revisions (and the bios based fix causes a performance hit on ALL B2 revisions on the order of ~15-20% over all) so the B3 stepping is what you want, and these should launch at a similar price point and will be labeled 9x50 series (ie 9550 instead of 9500).


Hope that helps.

What if you had a 3870x2?? I believe that on my current rig, my video card is bottlenecking. Only scoring about 10k. WOuld a quad core no help in that sense significantly??

well it depends on what video card you have now, and what resolutions you are trying to play at. 1024x768 or 1280x1024 are not very gpu bound, and your cpu will have a greater impact on performance in those lower resolutions. The higher you go, the more important the gpu becomes. 1680x1050/1600x1200/1920x1200 are all very gpu bound resolutions, and if your trying to run those kinda resolutions with say...an 8600GTS, then yes upgrading the video card would be a huge improvement.

I bought the 9600 at Frys for 170 bucks. Not a bad price ;D
I had to update my bios to 1103 (if I remember correctly) which is a Beta. I believe, my Dual Core 5200 OCed to 3.0ghz (2.6 stock) out performs the 9600 @ 2.3 (stock).
Not quite sure yet still need to perform more test.

Seem like my DUAL Core 5200 OCed to 3.0ghz out performs my new and now current Quad Core 9600 2.3ghz. I will try to over clock the 9600 as high as I can.

It completely depends on the program your running. Older programs and games will most likely run faster on the dualcore as in order to take advantage or mulitcores a program needs to be multithreaded and optimised to take advantage of them.

Check out the CPU charts are tomshardware.com

Lets look at the Phenom 9600 @ 2.3ghz and teh X2 6000 @ 3ghz.

The Xvid test.
x4 9600 - 2minutes 35
x2 6000 - 2minutes 33

The dualcore is 2 seconds faster at encoding the video because the xvid encoder isn't significantly optimised to use multiple cores so the extra 700mhz on the dualcore helps it to beat the phenom.

The Divx test.
x4 9600 - 1minute 40
x2 6000 - 2minutes 21

Same video same resolution and length but here the phenom is significantly faster then the dualcore 1.41x faster as that version of divx is written to take better advantage of multiple cores then the xvid version that was used.

Quake IV
x4 9600 - 96.7 fps
x2 6000 - 105.2 fps

Here the dualcore is almost 10% faster then the quadcore once again because quake IV doesn't take advantage of multiple cores so the faster clock spped on the dualcore is a big bonus.

3d Studio Max 9
x4 9600 - 54 seconds
x2 6000 - 1minute 27

Rendering programs have been written to take advantes of multiple cpus/cores for a long time and the phenom renders the scene 1.6x faster the the dualcore does even though the dualcore has a 30% faster clockspeed.

Basically any games recently bought or old will most likely run faster on the x2 at 3ghz then the phenom at 2.3 and you'd have to get the phenom to almost 3ghz to get the same performance. However now that dualcores are pretty comon and quadcores are becoming mainstream game developlers will be optimising the code to take more advantage of the multiple cores so games coming out or in the near future should run significantly faster on the phenom at the slower speed then the x2 at 3ghz just as the rendering in 3D Studio Max is considerably faster.