AMD Phenom X4 9950 & 9350e Review -part 4-

Pricing:

AMD has released official pricing, but what we see now on the net is a bit high. The Phenom X4 9950 initially comes in at $235 taking over the spot from the 9850. In a week however pricing will drop to about $205. With the Core 2 Quad Q9300 at $270 that looks like favorable pricing. With this move the 9850 will become a non Black Edition part, but AMD expects it to continue as a Black Edition for some time until later this year.

The 9150E and 9350E are priced at $175 and $195 respectively. You pay the premium for the lower power consumption here. Currently we have found these CPUs below.

Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition
Buy.com $300.99 free shipping

Phenom X4 9150
PC Nation $223.48 free shipping

We were not able to dig up pricing on the 9350, but as of right now things are at first availability costs, and should come down soon.

Conclusion:

This is a much needed booster shot to the Phenom line which doesn't solve AMD's overall problem with performance but provides great value and excellent power consumption levels. Thanks to ATI's amazing chipset in the 780G with already very low power requirements and that of the Phenom X4 9150e or 9350e you have one heck of an HTPC machine with low power consumption and heat. This is very alluring and AMD is clearly on top currently with Intel and Nvidia when it comes to IGP. The 9950 is a good boost if a small one but does yield easily the best Phenom overclock we've seen yet going all the way up to 3.2GHz stable, beating the 9850BE overclock by 300MHz so it definitely is a great chip too. The problem is it isn't good enough, and although a good deal at $235 compared to the Q9300 $275 or so AMD needs to come back strong with the next architecture. There is already talk of 45nm falling behind and that is already a fairly large blunder. Intel will probably charge a fortune for Nehalem but AMD wins a clear winner with their next new architecture, enough at least to match Intel's bottom line parts. ATI is doing great so far with their mid-range target strategy, which actually isn't that mid-range since it clobbers the GTX 260. Intel is a much larger competitor than Nvidia but hopefully some of that magic can rub off.



Phenom 9350e Score: 95%

Phenom 9950 Score: 91%