Only Phenom 1 I have run thus far was an X3 (8450?) in comparison to Brisbane X2s, which were themselves a small fraction down off Windsor performance, the Phenom didn't seem to "pull" near as hard. I mean it was benchmarking where it should be, but in use it felt bad. It was a bit like going from a PIII to a low end P4 1ghz to 1.3 say, you didn't feel like you got an upgrade. The Phenom II on the other hand seem to run as well as C2D given a 20% clockspeed advantage, and they'd have more than that if you bought the same dollar value CPUs to compare. Like a $100 Phenom II would be running rings around a $100 C2D with same RAM and board the same price. In the "well used" market now though the C2D will probably be more bang per buck. Maybe it was more latency in the DDR2 timings in the on chip memory controller, intended to allow supercharged DDR2 speeds that didn't arrive that made it struggle or something.

Phenom II competes with 45nm Core 2 Quads pretty comfortably, especially if a lot multi-threaded stuff is involved, but Nehalem and newer CPUs completely obliterate it.

Phenom 1 wasn't a bad CPU. It just had low clocks due to botched AMD 65nm process. As long as you use it just as a general purpose retro system, not focused on gaming, the 2.6Ghz version will do fine. Due to low clocks, we will probably not see many Phenom 1 builds here. I have Phenom X4 9950 BE 2.6Ghz, I originally thought I would use it for my AM2+ system but its gaming performance failed to meet my expectations. Phenom II X4 940 BE 3.0Ghz came very close and Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2Ghz met them.

Phenom II is what Phenom 1 was intended to be, but it only became possible with 45nm process.

Phenom 1/II in AM2+ can be considered retro, it is completely inadequate for modern usage due to very low maximum RAM by today's standards (8GB max), lack of modern instruction set and lack of drivers for new Windows. Having pcie is irrelevant. It is about 17 years old. AM3 is a different case as it can have 32GB RAM making it still usable after installing Windows 10 on it. Due to this, it will become obsolete much later.

Surely, you can build a better Intel rig nowadays but AM2+ can do a decent job with the top available CPUs that you will not worry about Intel being slightly faster. You build an AMD rig because you want AMD with decent performance, not necessarily the best and you want to tinker with it. Same reason why someone is building Athlon XP rig, socket 754, socket 939 or even 486 as you can use an emulator for that.

1. The original Phenom was a good ways slower than a C2D
2. Win XP was still the desktop of choice for 99% of people when that chip came out
3. No CPU lacking SSE4.1 (or 4.2, for that matter) is fit for "modern" use

It is definitely a Win XP chip. Even Phenom II x4 lost to C2D Quads in certain benchmarks. As mentioned above, early Core i3/i5/i7 series chips obliterate Phenoms (And most FX chips, too). Dark times for AMD fanboys, like me.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 19:32:

Phenom 1/II in AM2+ can be considered retro, it is completely inadequate for modern usage due to very low maximum RAM by today's standards (8GB max), lack of modern instruction set and lack of drivers for new Windows.

8GB is still enough for light modern use. I mean they still sell systems with 8GB nowadays, like chap laptops with no way to upgrade the RAM. Paired with SSD and GPU for GUI and video acceleration even AM2 still can be comfortably used for typical modern stuff like browsing the web.

More so on linux with less bloat and fancier memory management.

kingcake wrote on 2025-08-12, 23:37:

It is definitely a Win XP chip. Even Phenom II x4 lost to C2D Quads in certain benchmarks. As mentioned above, early Core i3/i5/i7 series chips obliterate Phenoms (And most FX chips, too). Dark times for AMD fanboys, like me.

Win XP? Well, nowadays it could probably be considered such because of performance. However when it was sold XP was very much outdated and there was no reason to used over win7 other than nostalgia or some special old software/hardware stuff.

At that point phenom2 was not all that bad either, even when first gen core i came along phenom2 was still reasonable when considering price/performance. Really dark times began with intel's sandy bridge release and then FX...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-13, 00:02:

8GB is still enough for light modern use. I mean they still sell systems with 8GB nowadays, like chap laptops with no way to upg […]
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AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 19:32:

Phenom 1/II in AM2+ can be considered retro, it is completely inadequate for modern usage due to very low maximum RAM by today's standards (8GB max), lack of modern instruction set and lack of drivers for new Windows.

8GB is still enough for light modern use. I mean they still sell systems with 8GB nowadays, like chap laptops with no way to upgrade the RAM. Paired with SSD and GPU for GUI and video acceleration even AM2 still can be comfortably used for typical modern stuff like browsing the web.

More so on linux with less bloat and fancier memory management.

kingcake wrote on 2025-08-12, 23:37:

It is definitely a Win XP chip. Even Phenom II x4 lost to C2D Quads in certain benchmarks. As mentioned above, early Core i3/i5/i7 series chips obliterate Phenoms (And most FX chips, too). Dark times for AMD fanboys, like me.

Win XP? Well, nowadays it could probably be considered such because of performance. However when it was sold XP was very much outdated and there was no reason to used over win7 other than nostalgia or some special old software/hardware stuff.

At that point phenom2 was not all that bad either, even when first gen core i came along phenom2 was still reasonable when considering price/performance. Really dark times began with intel's sandy bridge release and then FX...

Phenoms came out in 2007, Win 7 released in 2009. You are incredibly, profoundly wrong with your historical context. New Phenom machines mostly shipped with XP.

kingcake wrote on 2025-08-13, 01:28:

Phenoms came out in 2007, Win 7 released in 2009. You are incredibly, profoundly wrong with your historical context. New Phenom machines mostly shipped with XP.

Are we talking about phenom2 or phenom1? Because it was phenom2 you were talking about, which was released in late 2008-2009 and most definitely was never shipped with XP. Either vista or 7.

And do not forget that looking at release dates like this severely distorts "historical context". Nobody uses hardware right at its release point, it takes time to practically reach retail, get reviewed (more so then, less now) and find its way into people's systems. By the time phenom2/AM3 was readily available win7 was well past release...

First Phenom 1 was released on 19 November 2007, followed by majority of models in 2008. Due to usual delays with market availability it's predominantly 2008 technology.

Phenom II X4 was released in first half of 2009 and is definitely 2009 technology (C2 stepping up to 3.2Ghz version). Phenom II X6 is 2010 technology.

Windows Vista was released in early 2007, Windows 7 in late 2009. Windows Vista covers roughly 2007-2009 period.

If you bought a new computer with Phenom 1, it most likely came with Windows Vista, not XP. It doesn't make much sense to run Windows XP on a 4 core CPU. If you upgraded your MB+CPU, you ended up upgrading to Windows 7 when it came out. I saw noticeably better 3d mark 2006 results on Windows 7 than Windows XP.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-13, 06:48:

Windows Vista was released in early 2007, Windows 7 in late 2009. Windows Vista covers roughly 2007-2009 period.

If you bought a new computer with Phenom 1, it most likely came with Windows Vista, not XP. It doesn't make much sense to run Windows XP on a 4 core CPU. If you upgraded your MB+CPU, you ended up upgrading to Windows 7 when it came out. I saw noticeably better 3d mark 2006 results on Windows 7 than Windows XP.

Consumer resistance to Vista was extremely high, such that there was an extremely short period of Vista only, until they figured out the hardware wouldn't sell. Then a lot of machines came with XP installed with a Vista upgrade CD. Most "forced Vista" machines would have been laptops. So there's probably only a few months of "not XP" from Vista launch until a year into Windows 7, as they were still offering it as optional, as consumers were still suspicious. So there was no "inevitably you had Vista installed" about it, despite the lack of quad core utility, lack of stout 64 bit support, etc on XP...

.. It was also a RAM thing. I think at the beginning 512MB was still a default config, and Vista was obnoxious on that, then 1GB got more common, price dropped, and Vista was merely clunky, then just before 7 released 2GB was getting popular and Vista woke up. This was also because DDR2 was "new" to the mass market, even though it debuted a couple of years earlier, and prices were comparably higher, and large and fast modules more difficult to find, than DDR. Nobody outside prosumer/graphics was finding the XP RAM limitation a problem until 2009/10 maybe, as they were struggling to get 2GB still. I remember DDR2 getting "cheap" at the end of 2009 and I got some 2GB modules then, but for "RAM market is a yoyo" reasons 2GB modules got expensive for a few years again. Maybe it was the Win7 penetration and everyone wanting 4GB.

Win Vista and 7 were pretty annoying in general until SSDs became affordable. That cleared it right up. I screwed around with Raptors for awhile but they were annoyingly noisy and a marginal improvement over a decent 7200RPM.

With XP, you would want to disable CoolnQuiet because otherwise the problematic Phenom I/II CoolnQuiet behavior of independent core clocking can severely reduce performance. You can use Phenom MSR Tweaker to imitate CnQ instead as it does not do independent core clocking. With Vista onward the cores are clocked synchronously.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-12, 13:01:

candle_86 wrote on 2025-08-12, 11:36:

DDR3 benefits it massively. As someone who was on Phenom II until 2013 and still onto a living room HTPC until 2020 DDR3 helps a lot. In software from 2008 no it won't show a benefit but even tests in 2010 and 2011 showed 10-15% difference in performance between the same Phenom II on DDR2 and DDR3. Phenom II was good realistically until 2015/2016 when games started requiring instructions it didn't have, for the average person a good Phenom II X4 + 8gb DDR3 was all they needed, the DDR3 also let them beat the Core2 Quads finally, and the i5 6xx cpus, and don't forget later in life the Phenom II X4 competed with the i3 2xxx and it was a tossup in performance while the X6 competed with the i5 2xxx and they traded blows depending on workload.

As for viability for retro rigs, it really depends on what your after, I've got one rocking a Phenom X4 9500 just because i can.

Not, anything on AM2/3 is not even remotely close to sandy/ivy bridge. Yes, 4 core CPU can probably compete with 2 core one and perhaps 6 core with 4 core if you compare them in perfectly multi-threaded workload, but ultimately single thread performance is what matters, even now, more so then. And phenoms are hopelessly behind on that, basically on a level of high-end LGA775.

And as someone who used this CPUs i've never seen DDR3 benefit them significantly, the same as with LGA775. The difference is there, but usually it is negligible.

I used it extensively and still do for some tasks, and yes the X4 640 was a better by than the i3 2100 back in 2011, it was the recommendation as a matter of fact unless all you did was game, the Athlon II X3 was recommended vs the Pentium Dual Core. Its a false belife to assume Phenom II is that far behind because its really not, as for single vs multi threaded, by 2011 Quad was starting to matter more, especially for multi tasking and today single threaded is not that important at all, if it was everyone would rock a low core count CPU, but they don't, even Hexa Core is considered to little these days.

As for the era, Phenom 1 was an XP chip, Vista was ignored, I have a gateway buried somewhere that came with a Phenom X3 8450 and Windows XP Home, its COA is for XP Home, I've also got a lenovo buried in the closet that shipped with an AThlon II X4 640 and has an XP Pro COA not a 7 COA.

As for market Penetration that was rather fast, friend of mine that enlisted in the Army got a signing bonus when we reuped his enlistment and wanted a computer so we went to fry's, this was Nov 2009, and we bought a new ASUS AM3 790FX board, an X4 955, and a pair of HD 5770's, 4gb of DDR3 (2x2gb) and Windows XP Pro SP3

Many people ran Phenoms with Windows XP, but this was mostly due to bad feedback Vista got and high resource demands. It doesn't make sense to use Windows XP nowadays beyond its intended life span which is 2002-2006 as you would be missing dx10/dx11 graphics and Windows XP isn't effective for more than 2 cores anyway as it's an obsolete OS by then. dx11 games start to benefit from multiple cores as engines got better.

When categorizing hardware, I just go by the official release dates and use the following eras:
- Windows XP - 2002-2006
- Windows Vista - 2007-2009
- Windows 7 - 2010 - 2012

Windows Vista era is different from Windows XP in that games became very demanding with beautiful graphics such as Crisis, Far Cry 2, STALKER. Phenom 1 is Windows Vista era hardware, Phenom II is late Windows Vista / early Windows 7.

Similarly, Windows XP games were a big step up from Windows 98 games which often ran with just 16MB GPU and used low resolution textures.

An Athlon covers Windows 98 era, socket 939/AM2 (X2 cpu) covers Windows XP era, socket AM2+/AM3 (X4 cpu) covers Windows Vista/7 era.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-15, 07:55:

Many people ran Phenoms with Windows XP, but this was mostly due to bad feedback Vista got and high resource demands. It doesn't […]
Show full quote

Many people ran Phenoms with Windows XP, but this was mostly due to bad feedback Vista got and high resource demands. It doesn't make sense to use Windows XP nowadays beyond its intended life span which is 2002-2006 as you would be missing dx10/dx11 graphics and Windows XP isn't effective for more than 2 cores anyway as it's an obsolete OS by then. dx11 games start to benefit from multiple cores as engines got better.

When categorizing hardware, I just go by the official release dates and use the following eras:
- Windows XP - 2002-2006
- Windows Vista - 2007-2009
- Windows 7 - 2010 - 2012

Windows Vista era is different from Windows XP in that games became very demanding with beautiful graphics such as Crisis, Far Cry 2, STALKER. Phenom 1 is Windows Vista era hardware, Phenom II is late Windows Vista / early Windows 7.

Similarly, Windows XP games were a big step up from Windows 98 games which often ran with just 16MB GPU and used low resolution textures.

An Athlon covers Windows 98 era, socket 939/AM2 (X2 cpu) covers Windows XP era, socket AM2+/AM3 (X4 cpu) covers Windows Vista/7 era.

Actually I dual booted XP and Windows 7 on my Phenom 2, I actually got really upset when AMD dropped support because at the time I had bought an HD 7790 an AMD didn't release XP drivers for it. I ended up trading at to a friend in a straight swap for his GTX 470, because I wanted Windows XP, because some of my games relied on technology like securora I never liked the software but some of the games I played required it and guess what doesn't load on Windows 7. I also had an X-Fi and I liked my EAX effects.

kingcake wrote on 2025-08-13, 01:28:

Phenoms came out in 2007, Win 7 released in 2009. You are incredibly, profoundly wrong with your historical context. New Phenom machines mostly shipped with XP.

you forgotting that win 7 was just a polished vista, nothing major changed under the hood. WE built them with XP because Vista, OEMs shipped with Vista and then Windows 7.

ill always associate Am2 + Phenom with Windows 7 because at the time you started to see them everywhere, windows 7 already came out

its the same with Pentium Cpus, you associate them with Windows 95 (wich came 2 years later), not DOS and Windows 3.1