AMD Phenom X3 Processors
It has been about five months since AMD released their first Phenom quad core processors. The launch was somewhat disappointing in the eyes of many—lower than expected clock speeds and the highly publicized TLB bug cast quite a shadow on the highly anticipated launch.
Over the last month, however, things have finally started to turn around for AMD. Their newest B3 revision Phenom processors hit the streets to a much warmer reception. These new models are aggressively priced and are finally freed from the performance impeding TLB work around. Clock speeds are also finally increasing—2.5GHz with the latest 9850 Black Edition processor.
It goes without question that sometime in the not too distant future, quad-core processing will reach into the mainstream markets, but what about today? Although expensive, cutting-edge quad core processors gain a lot of attention in the press, 96% of all desktop PC sales include a CPU that costs less than $200. Aside from the rock bottom budget lines—this means dual core processors. I am no accountant but I can do the math and it is pretty clear that anyone in the CPU business would focus quite a bit on that segment of the market. So what do you do to stir up the competition in a market saturated in dual-cores? How about offer three cores for the price of two. This is exactly what AMD hopes to accomplish with their aggressively priced, tri-core Phenom X3.
Index
- Phenom Architecture Overview
- Specifications and Detail
- The Source of the X3
- Triple Troubles
- Testing Methodology
- Cinebench Rendering Performance
- LAME MT Audio Encoding Performance
- Sisoft Sandra Synthetic Benchmarks
- PCMark Vantage Memories and TV, Video Tests
- 3DMark 2006 and Aquamark 3
- Gaming Performance
- Overclocking
- Final Thoughts
Thanks for the review, Mike.
Very interesting.
It was great that you went the extra mile and cleared the "bad" core issue up with AMD. Go Mike!
These seem like a decent step up from the "X2" AMD processors. I'd personally like to see how they fold with an SMP client. Pretty encouraging for AMD, it's not beating intel soundly but the fab process definitely helps AMD to keep prices very competitive.
Learned lots thanks Mike!
Now I want one
As do I.
I'll have to wait and see-- can't afford such a machine in the next six months-- but will be interested to see how they spread and how popular they are. I am running a 2.66 GHz Intel processor now that was state of the art 4 years ago, due to the fact that I have no current applications that can use multiple cores in the versions I have.
No, AMD prices are de facto set by Intel. AMD has no choice in the matter.
Correct but the fab process helps take some pressure off of being forced to set that low price, as in it is more affordable for AMD than if they didn't have their fab process.
Well. Three cores...I don't really know what to think of that... I remember when two cores meant two physical chips, back in the day of the Athlon MP's and dual P3 Slot rigs...MAN thsoe made powerful machines. But I wonder if XP will handle 3 cores...?
XP can handle however many cores CPU manufacturers can fit into two physical sockets.
core-rect