Digit-Life posted a review on the AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor:

Just 91 points. AMD Phenom X4 9850 performs on a par with Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. These words sound like a hammer nailing down a coffin lid: the top quad-core processor from AMD, launched in 2008, demonstrates average performance on the level with a dual-core processor from Intel (!), launched about two years ago, which occupies the 14th place (!) in the official Intel rating. AMD will play its usual games with lower prices, of course - it has no other choice with this performance level. It's another question that I don't know the answer to: what's next? The K10 core is apparently weak. Besides, it was launched several years after Conroe. That is Intel enjoys a double advantage - in performance of the existing solution and in time to design a new one. I don't know how AMD will find a way out of this situation. But contemplating our test results, a bitter joke comes to mind - the main unfixable mistake in Phenom is this chip itself.