AMD released their new High-end CPU, with the older 9850 is one of the first, non-bug ridden CPU, to battle out with the High-end of Intel, But this behemoth is not good enough with the Higher clock dual core of the E8000 series. And the Q6600 is still a good deal with just $200 and going lower, when Intel announced that the Prices of the entire mainstream Processors will be dropped, it will be a good value to have a Q9300 in your Intel system but the much cheaper option is still the AMD phenom series but still shrugging off the TBL problem.
If you are a screaming fan of AMD,this is a great new inclusion from AMD, not bad as a CPU, but beaten by their Intel counterpart, the newer Black edition of the Phenom 9950 is another high end CPU with the usual four independent cores with 65nm architecture fabrication process, they consist of each core 512kb L2 cache and a stock frequency of 2.6GHz and with a price tag of about $300 in the net and the 9850 about as little as $3 difference with the newer Phenom which can sometimes annoying to pay a little more for the flagship than to the 9850.
With a small difference with the old 9850, the gains with the new 9950, is its core multiplier unlocked and very easy for a tweaked to over clock with its stock cooler in about 3GHz, but the heat dissipation is great, because of the stress and the higher power consumption. You are forced to buy or whack in a aftermarket cooling, to bring the heat down from 60degree down to at least 10 degrees difference form their OEM counterpart.
With our test with the Gigabyte GA-790FX-DS3 with the 1066MHZ of corsair XMS2, and ATI sapphire 4870, and Seagate 1GB. With the memory test, is a good performance with the help of the hyper threading 4000MHz helped transferring the info through and back to the CPU and the RAM. With the raw performance of the CPU with the stock speeds is a bit disappointing only winning against The Dual cores like the E6600 and the E8200 with the multi-tasking operations. With the games department is a mix back with the RTS games goes best with the multiple cores but in the shooter games it is a different story, with a bit of tweaking and up the frequency we can only get about 15% more speed on games, really much but compare it with the Intel on stock, and there goes your warranty.
You can find out some of the info about the processor or find out any other information like the warranty or anything just visit www.AMD.com
And with the spec of the Phenom 9950: http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUFilter.aspx
