Today we take a look at AMD’s updated Phenom CPU. Besides the slight speed bump, these B3 stepping based CPUs are now free of the “TLB Erratum” bug that AMD rightly disclosed during the launch of Phenom that causes the CPU to crash under extreme workload conditions.

AMD has also changed the model numbering on these CPUs with all models ending in 50 instead of 00 and has reintroduced X to the name which will denote the number of cores. . So these new CPUs are now called Phenom X4 9650 or Phenom X4 9750. The following table shows the new CPUs that AMD has planned lined up along with the prices mentioned to us in Euros but converted to UAE Dirhams.

As you can see from the table above, the pricing on these CPUs is pretty decent with the X4 9850 selling for about the same as Intel's 2.4GHz based QX6700. This is the CPU that were looking at today which has the been released as a Black Edition. The “Black Edition” is AMD’s term for something equivalent of Intel’s “Extreme Edition.” These CPUs have unlocked multipliers both ways to overclocking them is as easy as changing the multiplier from the BIOS. You can obviously change the HT speed for overclocking as well.

There are two things that need to be pointed out about the Phenom X4 9850. First, the good one which is an increase in HT speed from 3600MHz to 4000MHz. This will certainly help a bit in overall performance. The bad part is the 125W TDP which, from what we've been hearing, is causing issues on lower-end boards. Logically speaking, if you're planning on using a high-end CPU, chances are that your motherboard will also be a high-end one.

Lets find out how this CPU compare to Intel's Quad core platform that are priced slightly higher. Our testbed is made up of 2GB RAM and the 8800GTX card on both the platforms with the Intel setup using an ASUS X38 motherboard and the Phenom setup using a Gigabyte 780 chipset motherboard.