Today is the launch of the 9150e and 9350e Phenom processors, as well as the new Black Edition 9950.  The “e” series of chips are rated at a nice 65 watts, and are aimed at productivity boxes as well as HTPCs.  The high end 9950 chip is unlocked and ready for some overclocking action.  It also sets a new record for power at 140 watts TDP.  The 9150e is clocked at 1.8 GHz, the 9350e is at 2 GHz, and the 9950 is sitting pretty at 2.6 GHz (a full 9 months after the infamous Tahoe launch event).

I was sent a 9350e, and while Ryan was busy getting married and frolicking in the sun somewhere down south, I was supposed to be reviewing this sub-65 watt, sub-$200 processor.  Apparently my wife was not in the mood to have me review a product all weekend, so she decided to fall down the stairs at home and break her ankle in three places.  An ambulance ride (yes, the break was that bad), and ER visit, and a trip to the operating room fleshed out the rest of my day.  Throw in a 5 year old boy and a newly adopted 6 year old boy, I had my hands full without even getting close to the testbench.  So basically the weekend was slightly unproductive when it comes to a processor testing standpoint.

Yesterday I had my chance to really dig in and hopefully get things finished up.  Now it seems that Biostar did not want me to finish the review.  I have their 780G motherboard here, and it refused to cooperate in any way, shape, or form when it came to successfully booting up and installing Windows while the quad core processor was residing in the socket.  Flashing the BIOS and adjusting everything I could think of would not allow the board to boot up.  Different memory speeds, timings, dimm manufacturers, power supplies… nothing made the board cooperate with the 9350e.

So about 10 pm I gave up on the Biostar and went back to the Asus M3A32 MVP-Deluxe.  An OS re-install later, updating, benchmark installation and testing… and it was 2am.  So I went to sleep for 4 hours, got back up and continued testing, then went to my job at 8am.  So now you all know the reason why there is not a lovely 9350e review up at PC Per.  I’m still working on comparative testing then will finish writing the article.  I am hoping it will be up later tonight, but when you consider that as of late… if it wasn’t for bad luck, we would have no luck at all.

Some mixed reviews around the web, but so far my overall impression is positive.  AMD is not doing anything revolutionary or radical with their products, but they are trying to fill a niche where they see a chance to sell some processors.  Once I finish testing, then I am sure I will have a far more concrete opinion on the Phenom 9350e.