This chip has it all: buggy cpu (TLB errata), overhyped (40% better than Intel), low performance (slower than previous generation), rumors of defective cores, low availability, low yields, high cost of manufacturing, long delays, company in financial ruins. I think anything bad that can happen to a chip has happened to Phenom. I can think of any other time where the launch was so bad.

Phenom only comes second to Prescott's launch. Prescott is the worst CPU launch of all time.

Nah, that was the Inmos T9000. I went to the 'launch', and they didn't even have chips; in fact I'm not sure they ever had chips beyond a few test builds for parts of the design.

Great chip on paper, shame they couldn't make it work.

Phenom is only bad because Intel's offering is so much better.

There is no way it is the worst CPU launch ever. You must remember in the 90s every no one cared about AMD even though they were making crap Intel clone CPUs. Nowadays, after AMD gained recognition due to the Athlon and K8 line, everyone cares about their products. If they hadn't made a bang with their K8's, no one would have any reason to believe Phenom has been the worst launch. Phenom may be that worst launch in a while that has gotten a lot of publicity, but then think about Intel's Prescott line.
Of course, it also depends on what you define as a bad launch- bad products, bugs, delays, over hype, lack of supply to meet demand-etc.
Of course, you wouldn't say the Nintendo Wii was a bad launch because it sold out so quick .

Even though the prescotts were bad (I know, I'm on one right now), they are far from the worst. The Netburst architecture atleast had one advantage, it was able to clock damn high. I took my 3.2 perscott above 4ghz...The Phenom's OC'ing potential is HORRID, all tied down to the architecture which is a reason we don't have faster clocked Phenom's. Back during the Athlon XP and prescott days, intel atleast had one area covered performance wise...Which was the video editing/encoding market. Even though the Netburst architecture lacked in performance in other areas compared to AMD's offerings, Netburst's video multimedia for editing and encoding still had a lead over AMD, which is why I purchased mine to begin with considering I'm a video editor/encoder.

You really can't compare the two, Netburst was a bad architecture indeed, intel got cozy at the top and AMD handed their tushes too them rather painfully. But atleast the Netburst architecture was able to get high clocks unlike AMD's Barcelona/Phenom...Which at least lessened the gap, and in the consumer market's mindset, "more mhz = better". Obviously flawed, but still generated profits for them.

But the main point, Netburst was bad, but Phenom is MUCH worse...Atleast the netburst architecture clocked high to mask the performance issues, unlike AMD's current architecture, which has mediocre performance which can't even beat a year + old q6600 clock for clock (even clocked higher, it still can't beat it), been delayed for ages, over hyped, takes lots of voltage and gives off lots of heat (just like the prescotts), and can't even clock high.

This is the truest statement the phenom is not that bad as people have made it to be but Intel just is offering a much better product. Just trying to be reasonable.

No.

The worst launch was Union Beaver Pelt & Petrochemical Telegraph Company's H3200G. It had a tendency to rip punch cards and was vastly overpriced at an outrageous $55. It also had very high power consumption, requiring 165 pounds of coal to carry out a double digit multiplication.

Ya, kinda

Err, should have made myself clearer. Launch wise, I'm saying Prescott was the worst ever. I'm agreeing with yomamafor1 that Phenom is the second worst launch. However the cpu itself is bad only because Intel is much better.

That's what I was going to say. Phenom is an improvement over X2, but Prescott was a total disaster.

1. Prescott was a last ditch attempt to increase P4 clock speed by adding extra pipelines, but Prescott's extra pipelines and higher cache did not improve the P4 in the way the Northwood's higher cache showed improvements over Williamette.

2. Intel bragged that they'd get to 10 gigahertz from a technology that needed extremely long pipelines to increase clock speed. 31 wasn't enough and they had to give up and start over with Pentium M tech (based on the P3).

The 805 Smithfield was an overclocker's dream. It could heat a small hot tub on watercooling while reaching 4 gigahertz and providing the processing power of a Athlon X2 4800+. Wheee! That's some Intel power that proves Netburst is the technology of choice for real overclockers.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/0 [...] 29.html#3d

I'm sure all the Intel fans here had one and watercooled it. I'm sure they didn't upgrade until Kentsfield

3. Intel could not compete relying upon last gen Netburst, so they began anticompetitive OEM rebates to coerce partners to limit the number of PC's with AMD CPU's. That works and no one is going to notice it. Not regulators in the EU, Japan, Korea and the New York AG's office.

Prescott was the worst of all worlds. A product that failed so miserably to perform outside of a single limited use that the company behind the tech had to do some quick marketing and unethical maneuvering to recover from the launch.

If you look at Tom's CPU charts and the Wolfdale review, even buggy B2 Phenom's aren't that far behind the Q6600, and are ahead of some Wolfdale and Conroe dual cores in some apps. As Supreme Commander shows, it's a budget quad core for games that support more than 2 cores (which will be most by the end of the year).

B3 will improve things, but 45nm will improve thermals and is supposed to give a boost to clocks up to 3.2. Then, maybe there will be overclocking potential. As my snide comments about the 805 Smithfield shows, just having the overhead to clock higher by itself means bupkis.

It was all Intel marketing once Prescott arrived. They had nothing to offer outside of video encoding, and that's what we used our Northwood's for. Those Northwood's competed well against the Athlon XP in games too. Smithfield was so bad that I went X2 instead.

It wasn't Prescotts launch that was so bad but rathe the CPU was not that great. It did fine in performance but ran hot.

The OP forgot to add the fact that they pulled the Phenom 9700 on the launch date, have yet to release anything clocked higher than a 9600 @2.3GHz, had false promises at controlled expos of 3GHz chips, more delays of the chips itself, failed to compete with Intels 18 month old Q6600, placed a stop ship on some including the Optys, released a 9600BE that is no guaranteed to be able to OC to the same as the next guys and has delayed and delayed the B3 chips and might just drop them all together(that is yet to be seen as there was the report of them releasing the 9750 and such instead).

That to me is a failure of a launch. When Prescott was released Intel released all the different flavors with ease and got them clocked up to 3.8GHz which is pretty fast for a stock CPU. They didn't have a stop ship, didn't cancel a certain chip and never promised a part they couldn't deliver in terms of speed.

If AMD can get 45nm @ SOI to clock to 3.2GHz and not be a freakin Sun that would be interesting. You need to research SOI and that the fact that right now SOI @ 65nm is why the Phenom uses more power. and SOI @ 45nm will cause more leakage and in order to control that it will have to come out at lower clock speeds. Until AMD has IBM's HK/MG I do not see Phenom hitting 3GHz easily for every chip.

And having the headroom to OC for enthusiast is not bupkis. Look at the Q6600. Its a enthusiast dream considering that you can easily OC it to 3GHz on stock voltage which is a 25% OC and 3.2GHz with a little voltage bump which is a 33%OC all on air. 3.4GHz is obtainable on air as well which would upt it at a 42% OC. This also increases performance in every aspect from video encoding to gaming. Having that headroom also means that if Intel wanted they could easily release their chips clocked that high stock for the same price where as right now Phenom is stuck at about what 2.7GHz is the normal?