PricingUsing 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.
EvaluationAll 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
Conclusive thoughtsBeing 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.