The new series of AMD Phenom CPUs are out and available. The 9850 Black Edition running at 2.5 GHz would make an excellent upgrade to my just built Phenom 9500 2.2 GHz system. And at $235 USD it’s hard to pass up. I was able to purchase my 9500 for $150, which was a great deal for a quad core. The additional expense may not seem worth it for an extra .3 GHz, but reviews that this CPU can overclock to 3.0 GHz stable may make one think again.

Additionally, this generation of Phenoms are without the TLB erratum that plagues the CPU that I currently own. My Gigabyte mobo bios came pre-installed with the TLB fix enabled which is reported to cause the 9500 to suffer from some performance loss. I’ve not disabled it so I have no bearing of reference.

You may be asking if I’m looking for a performance system, then why did I go with AMD over Intel. That would be a quad core CPU for $150. No other reason. My total system cost was less than $1,000. Considering too that I’m waiting on $70 in mail-in rebates it’s even sexier.

Since my birthday is coming up, some of you may be wondering what to get me. A 9850 wouldn’t be a bad choice.

Ah, such is the life of a system builder. If your system is ever ‘complete’, that means it’s out-of-date.

Been doing a few render tests with the Phenom. Although comparing it to a Dual G4 Mac is a little silly, it’s what I’ve upgraded from. Here are some photos of the system, is nice.

The NVidia 8600 GT is treating me pretty well too. It only has 256 MB, but I opted for 256 DDR3 instead of the 512 DDR2 in the similar price range.