[geeks] Phenom (was Holy Cow! OpenSolaris on a retail laptop?!?!?!?!)

[Lionel Peterson]

On Dec 19, 2008, at 12:27 PM, nate at portents.com wrote:

>>   As a side note, anyone ever monkey with the AMD Phenom 9100e CPUs  
>> (4x
>>   core at 1.8 GHz)?
>
> Phenoms models which aren't a xx50 series means it's a pre-B3 stepping
> (i.e. has the TLB erratum, which is typically worked-around in the  
> BIOS by
> disabling the TLB, lowering performance).  I'd recommend avoiding  
> any xx00
> Phenoms.  A Phenom 9150e is at least 10% faster than a 9100e because  
> it is
> a B3 stepping without the TLB design flaw.

I don't quite follow the logic that it should be avoided because there  
are versions of the CPU that are about 10% faster... I think that 10%  
performance hit it reflected in the price.

It would be very hard (but probably not impossible) to build a similar  
quad-core system *shipped* for $400, incl. Tax.

It's hard to find quad-core Intel CPUs for less than $175, which  
doesn't leave much for the rest of the system, forcing you to assemble  
the system using whatever is on sale...

I'm not sure about AMD quad-core CPU prices, but the 10% faster 9150e  
looks to be about $170 at newegg.com, leading to the same trade-offs  
for a $400 quad-core desktop (w/ Vista or even Linux for that matter)...

> The rest of the specs you list for the price are 'eh'.  (Personally  
> I'd
> always rather build a PC with exactly the parts I want, which comes  
> out to
> about the same price, but that's me.)

Lionel