Introduction:



It has been a while since a real innovation was seen in the processor scene. Everything was just a little improvement of the previous generation, everything was predictable. Until a month or two ago, when we received a little pdf file containing the following slide.



At first, this seemed to be unnecessary: quadcores were already being called too much for the average user and there were enough dualcores available. But then we realized that AMD had something to make up: Intel's 45nm Wolfdale processors were fast and not that expensive and AMD had issues speedbinning the high-end Phenom processors. So, instead of producing slower Phenom X2's, AMD added decided it was time for the world's first working triple core processing unit.

The biggest question however is of course if that third core really has that noticeable effect on the overall performance. We'll find out in this review.

Joe from Didi-trade.be provides Nelson Computers with AMD Phenom hardware for their different PC builds; we got send the AMD Phenom X3 8450 CPU which will be available in upcoming pre-build affordable PC configurations at Nelson Computers



Running at a modest 2100Mhz by default the Phenom X3 8450 will face stiff competition from Intel Core 2 Duo series;

Phenom X3 8450

Let's have a look at the exterior of the processor.


(Click to Zoom)

The chip was assembled in week 8 of 2008, which makes it a fairly new processor on the market. The X3's are basicly X4's with one core disabled, be it because it's broken or isn't capable of working at a frequency that's high enough to sell it as an X4 model.

Test setup

Madshrimps Test Setup
CPU	AMD Phenom X4 9850 Intel Core 2 Q9300 AMD Phenom X3 8450 Intel Core 2 E8200(*)
Cooling	Noctua NH-U12P Stock Aluminum Intel Heatsink
Mainboard	MSI K9A2 Platinum v1 Asus Commando Dfi LP UT P35-T2R(*²)
Memory	2 * 1GB TeamGroup PC6400
Other	Sparkle Calibre 8600GT 512MB (drivers FW 169.21) Tagan 480W PSU Western Digital 320Gb SATA HDD Windows XP SP3

(*): We downclocked our E8500 to run at stock E8200 speeds for easier comparison.
(*²): At the moment of testing, our Commando board was no longer available, so we used a P35 instead.

Methodology

The following benchmarks were used:

Lavalys Everest: Memory latency

SuperPi 1M

Wprime 32M

Wprime 1024M

PCMark05

TechArp X264 HD benchmark

Cinebench 10

3DMark2001SE

3DMark06

Prey

Crysis

We ran the CPU at stock settings and overclocked at 250HTT with the standard multiplier applied, which is 10,5x. The memory settings were identical to those we've used in the quadcore article, so:

Stock at 200HTT: 533MHz 4-6-6-22(*) - Unganged

Overclocked to 250HTT: 500MHz 4-4-4-10 - Unganged

Both ganged and unganged are dual channel memory settings, but in ganged mode the memory is seen as a 1x128bit block and in unganged, the memory is seen as a 2x64bit block. Ganged has more synthetical bandwidth, unganged is overall faster.

SuperPi and Wprime:

SuperPi has been around for ages now, but still reflects the performance of the technology. Being single threaded, you won't increase performance by inserting a quad core processor, but that's why we've chosen Wprime as an alternative. Wprime has been included in the HWBot benchmark suite for quite some time now and many people agree on the quality of the benchmark. Wprime works with multiple threads and is ideal to test multi-core processors.



In the single-threaded SuperPi, the X3 performs at about the same level as his bigger X4 brother does. Overclocked to 2,625Ghz, it's faster than the Phenom X4 9850 at stock speeds. When it comes to multi-threading, you can see that, if the program is capable of dealing with multiple cores, the X3 performs nicely in between a dual core and a quad core.



In the longer 1024M version of Wprime, we can spot the same thing: the X3 performance lies in between a dual core and a quad core.

Lavalys Everest 4.50

We used the memory benchmark utility to measure the performance of the memory management.





No surprises here, time to see how the CPU does is real world applications and games ->

Futuremark benchmarks

These synthetic 3D benchmarks from Futuremark allow you to evaluate the expected performance of a system with different generation games. As each 3DMark uses different feature and quality settings, it allows you to get an idea of how a video card will perform in games. But be aware that since Futuremark takes DirectX guide lines to build their stress tests with all features available, performance can differ from real world games when those games don’t fully support/implement all DX features. So take these results with a grain of salt, and always compare them to our game benchmarks.

3DMark2001SE

The 3rd product in the 3DMark line has been around for ages now and still is used by many people to measure their system's power. Over the years, the benchmark has become more a system benchmark than a pure graphics benchmark.



The X3 8450 is still on track, being slightly faster than the 125MHz lower clocked X4 equivalent.

3DMark06

The last of the DX9 benches in their series is still a graphics card benchmark; however, there's a place for CPU testing as well, as Futuremark developed a CPU test for this benchmark. The more cores, the merrier, so results with four cores will always be better than with two cores.



At first, I was a bit disappointed by the results of the X3, but knowing that Intel's 45nm technology is about 400-500 points faster in the CPU test, I don't give up hope yet.

Cinebench R10

Cinebench is a benchmark that fully stresses the CPU and measures the raw power of your processing unit by rendering a high-quality image.



This may be the best example of the geniality of AMD: we know that the Phenom is very slow in comparison to the Intel 45nm, just have a look at both quadcores. Now, with that extra core, the Phenom X3 actually performs better than a 45nm dualcore clocked 375Mhz higher! Pretty impressive.

PCMark05

PCMark05 is the last benchmark of the PCMark series which works in Windows XP and it still offers the simplicity of multiple small benchmarks in one. We've selected the most interesting subtest and put the all in one chart.

TechArp X264 HD benchmark

This benchmark has been introduced to me by Piotke, who used it in his QX9650 review. Using multiple cores it gives us quite a decent view on how fast our setup can encode a short DVD-MPEG2 video clip into an X264 clip. We used the latest HD resolution version of the benchmark to run our tests.



The triple core clearly performs better than the dual core.

Crysis

Crysis is one of the newer games on the market, one of those games you want to play at highest settings but just can't. Due to the insane amount of details, rendering the game becomes very hard, even for the very recent high-end video cards. We used the Crysis benchmark tool (can be found on Guru3D) and tested both systems in two different test environments: 800x600 and 1680x1050, for the same reasons as Prey. We used the CPU benchmark demo of Crysis.



Surprisingly, the X3 doesn't do that well in the game tests! I reckon Crysis is not yet fully optimized for triple core processing units.

Prey

Prey uses the venerable game engine from ID software, Tech4 it’s called now, also used for Doom 3 and Quake 4. Prey started development back in 1995, and it took 11 years to see this project come to completion, but when it finally was launched, gamers were pleased with such beautiful graphics, nice story line and original gravity puzzles.



With the help of the HardwareOC Prey benchmark utility, we tested the performance. As we know we're a bit limited when it comes to graphical power, we ran the Prey game in two different test scenarios:

- 640x480, Low detail, no AA or AF: To magnify the difference between both processors
- 1680x1050, low detail, no AA or AF: Is the difference still visible in higher resolutions?



In Prey, the X3 is slower than the dual core of Intel, which can be partially explained by Prey being a single-threaded game and has thus no advantage with one core extra. However, that doesn't explain why the X3 comes behind in both game tests, whereas the X4 is pretty much on par with the Intel Q9300.

Pricing

Using Froogle and Geizhals.eu, we searched for the average price of both processors.

AMD Phenom X3 8450: €110 | $145
Intel Wolfdale E8200: €130 | $185

The prices are pretty much equal, so you can either choose for a Wolfdale which is clocked 564MHz higher or a Phenom which has one core extra.

If we combine the real world application benchmark results and those who use compression/encoding to gauge performance, all add them together and divide them by price, we get an overall price/performance idea. It’s not very scientifically accurate, it doesn’t mean a whole lot; but should help prove where the AMD Phenom strengths lie:



Taking only into account the price for the CPU, you can see that you get approximately 15~20% more performance per dollar/euro spend when you go for the AMD Phenom X3. Keep in mind that the X3 will be faster for video-encoding and other multi-threaded applications.

On a sidenote: Intel is planning to reduce prices in Q3 '08. We haven't yet been informed about the new price of the E8200, but we suspect the price will lower with about 10% to $170. Even then, the Wolfdale will be behind the Phenom when it comes to price performance ratings.

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Evaluation

All in all, I'm surprised in a positive way with the AMD X3 triple core processor. Yes, gaming performance is a little behind, but the difference is very small, games which support multi cores will get a nice boost with the X3, unfortunately the list of games that efficiently support more than 2 cores is very short. Three cores is innovative and in fact a brilliant move from AMD, because Intel is not capable of producing triple cored CPU's as they work with native dualcores (a quadcore = 2 x dualcore glued together).

AMD Phenom X3 8450
+ Pricing
+ An extra core in comparison to the 45nm Wolfdale
+ Performance/Price Ratio
- Gaming performance lower than expected
- Locked multiplier doesn’t make it very overclocking friendly
- Low base frequency of only 2.1Ghz
- Limited availability at retail stores

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Conclusive thoughts

Being a hardware enthusiast and overclocker, I'm not in favor of AMD's Phenom series, because the overclockability is too low, HOWEVER, if people ask me for a well-priced configuration that can play the latest games fluently and has no issues handling video encoding instructions, I will recommend to at least consider buying a Phenom. The motherboards are quite affordable, the processors are actually cheap, the performance is good.

In the end, I have to admit that AMD's X3 move was clever and definitely should be seen by Intel as a worthy competitor for their Wolfdale series in regard of price/performance value.

We'd like to thank Joe from Diditrade for providing the Phenom X3 8450 for test, Alternate.be for lending us the Intel Q9300, MSI for helping us out with the very capable MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard.