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Phenom 9900: 2.6GHz quad core from AMD - can it take on Core 2 Quad's head to head?

We published our Phenom 9600 review at the end of November; but in this industry, nothing stands still. Since then, AMD has been kind enough to send us a Phenom 9900 reviewer's kit, and today, we will see how it stacks up.

The kit included:

• Phenom 9900 2.6GHz Quad Core Processor
• AMD heatpipe heatsink (same as before)
• Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe Motherboard
• a pair of Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 5-5-5-15 modules

For our stock speed testing, we used the kit as it was sent to us, however for our overclocking tests, we switched to a Noctua NH-U 12, one of our favorite CPU coolers.

If you've read our Phenom 9600 Review, you will remember that I reviewed it from the perspective of someone who might want to upgrade an existing AM2 dual core system - and I found it to be a decent upgrade.

With the speed increase to 2.6GHz I decided to compare the Phenom 9900 to the previously reviewed Phenom 9600, and to two Intel quad core processors at their stock speeds.

1. The Core 2 Quad QX6700 runs at 2.66GHz at stock speed, and I suspect that AMD will price the Phenom 9900 below the QX6700's current $949 price tag.
2. The Xeon X3210 runs at 2.13GHz at stock speed, and is an excellent performer, currently selling for $247
3. update: A reader pointed out that the Core 2 Quad E6700 running at 2.66GHz is available for $560

According to the rumour mill, the Phenom 9900 may be priced around the $350 mark - which while above the Xeon X3210's price, is WELL below the price of the QX6700.

As everyone knows, AMD has had difficulties with launcing the Phenom; it launched about six months after it was supposed to, at well below the originally announced 2.8GHz - 3GHz launch speeds.

On top of that, shortly after release news of the TLB erratum was spread far and wide. AMD was able to issue a microcode update that works around the problem, albeit with a reported 10%-20% performance hit, and AMD also released a patch to the Linux kernel that allows it to work around the problem while reportedly taking only a roughly 1% performance hit - one hopes that Microsoft will release a similar hotfix for XP and Vista.

Now that we have a B2 stepping of the Phenom 9900 to test (yes, it has the TLB bug) let's see how it compares to both a less expensive 2.13GHz Xeon X3210 and a more expensive, basically same clock rate, Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6700!