AMD Phenom 9850 X4 Black Edition CPU Review

Author: Ben Sun Date: 03-30-2008

One thing AMD is stressing is the upgradeability of their older motherboards to support their new Quad Core CPUs. AMD sent a list of compatible motherboards that are on AMD’s Recommended List and it includes older motherboards including the nForce 570 chipset M2N-32-SLI and the AMD 690 boards that were prevalent a couple of years ago. Newer boards like the AMD 790FX and NVIDIA GeForce 7050 and presumably the upcoming 780a are being tested and qualified but few if any are on the list at the moment. The other consideration is for the home builder wanting to build an inexpensive motherboard+CPU combo. The 9850 is retailing for $235, add a 780G motherboard from AMD or an equivalent NVIDIA integrated board like the 8300 and you’d have a system that’d be hard to match on the Intel side dollar for dollar, especially with the state of Intel’s graphics drivers not even supporting DX10 as of yet. As an upgrade to existing AMD systems is where this CPU will be the sweet spot. This is due to the fact that if you have a slower CPU, but still want a faster system, this is an easy buying decision to make and will most certainly speed your system up from an older AMD CPU.

Review Link: http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/hardware/1762_1.html