Buddy J
23 Apr 2008, 4:36pm
It's launch day for the new AMD Phenom X3 processors (http://icrontic.com/articles/phenom_x3), and we've got the full story on them! Kudos to Mike for going the extra mile to push this review out!
Intel's Core2 processors are a very tough crowd to beat these days though, especially their latest 45nm models. Although the 45nm Core2 Duo often outperforms the Phenom X3 in older and single-threaded applications, the X3s posses a lot of untapped potential that will be useful in the future. As we've seen—the X3 scales very well in applications that can take advantage of multiple processing cores. Multi-threaded applications will become increasingly common moving forward, so the X3 is a good longer-term choice in that respect. Really, it comes down to fewer, faster cores, or more numerous, slower cores. When comparing the raw crunching power in some synthetic benchmarks, the X3 8750 and the E8400 are almost at par. The problem is finding real-world applications today that can take advantage of that extra horsepower.
Intel's Core2 processors are a very tough crowd to beat these days though, especially their latest 45nm models. Although the 45nm Core2 Duo often outperforms the Phenom X3 in older and single-threaded applications, the X3s posses a lot of untapped potential that will be useful in the future. As we've seen—the X3 scales very well in applications that can take advantage of multiple processing cores. Multi-threaded applications will become increasingly common moving forward, so the X3 is a good longer-term choice in that respect. Really, it comes down to fewer, faster cores, or more numerous, slower cores. When comparing the raw crunching power in some synthetic benchmarks, the X3 8750 and the E8400 are almost at par. The problem is finding real-world applications today that can take advantage of that extra horsepower.