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AMD's Phenom X3 8000 Series: Fighting Two Cores with Three?
AMD's Phenom X3 8000 Series: Fighting Two Cores with Three?
Date: April 23rd, 2008
Topic: CPU & Chipset
Manufacturer: AMD
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
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AMD has been pretty active on the CPU front lately, last month we saw the Phenom re-launch with the B3-stepping 50-series quad-core processors and today AMD is unveiling its 50-series triple-core parts.

We've got the lineup below:

Cores Stepping Clock Speed TDP L2 Cache L3 Cache 1 Ku Price
AMD Phenom X4 9850 4 B3 2.5GHz 125W 2MB 2MB $235
AMD Phenom X4 9750 4 B3 2.4GHz 125W 2MB 2MB $215
AMD Phenom X4 9550 4 B3 2.2GHz 95W 2MB 2MB $209
AMD Phenom X3 8750 3 B3 2.4GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $195
AMD Phenom X3 8650 3 B3 2.3GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $165
AMD Phenom X3 8450 3 B3 2.1GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $145

Note that all three of the triple-core parts are 50-series CPUs, meaning they are based on the B3 stepping and do not suffer from the TLB erratum that plagued the early Phenom processors. AMD continues to ship B2 stepping CPUs, but most of them are to OEMs that aren't as concerned with the performance hit associated with the software TLB fix.

Pricing is also pretty interesting, as the top end Phenom X3 8750 is only $20 cheaper than the quad-core Phenom X4 9750 despite running at the same clock speed. The X3 8650 and 8450 are far more interesting as both of them are priced closer to $150.

There's now some overlap between AMD's triple-core Phenom and dual-core Athlon X2 offerings in terms of price, have a look:

Cores Clock Speed TDP L2 Cache L3 Cache 1 Ku Price
AMD Phenom X3 8750 3 2.4GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $195
AMD Phenom X3 8650 3 2.3GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $165
AMD Phenom X3 8450 3 2.1GHz 95W 1.5MB 2MB $145
AMD Athlon X2 6400+ 2 3.2GHz 125W 2MB 0MB $178
AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 2 3.0GHz 125W 2MB 0MB $167
AMD Athlon X2 5600+ 2 2.8GHz 89W 2MB 0MB $146

The Athlon X2s still hold a tremendous clock speed advantage, but Phenom can do more work per clock. It will be interesting to see if three Phenom cores at 2.1GHz are a better buy than two Athlon X2 cores at 2.8GHz.

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45 Comments - Last by pringlep0, 482 days ago
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Piracy by ViRGE, 577 days ago
"Now if you pirate your HD movies then none of this matters, as GPU accelerated H.264 decode doesn't work on much pirated content."

Sure it does, the Cyberlink H.264/MPEG-2 decoder is a complete DirectShow-compliant module. Anything H.264 that can be played in a DirectShow application is accelerated by it, both legit and pirated content.

Reply
RE: Piracy by ChronoReverse, 577 days ago
And on the free software side, Media Player Classic Home Cinema (what a mouthful) also has GPU accelerated decode now too (only for the newer video cards though).

While not all pirate content are encoded in a manner that can be accelerated, the functionality is available now.

Reply
RE: Piracy by 0roo0roo, 576 days ago
it doesn't matter either way. pirated h264 content tends to be lower bitrate versions of the full hd rip.
even at full bitrate it doesn't matter as processors have come to a point where even budget dual cores can decode h264 quite well.

Reply
Yes, they are accelerated. by ImmortalZ, 577 days ago
Any MPEG4 AVC video encoded at Profile 4.1 or lower is fully accelerated by today's GPUs. Scene releases from the past few months confirm to this - and even with this, most of the older release are still compatible given you use the proper filters.

Reply
RE: Yes, they are accelerated. by ImmortalZ, 577 days ago
* By Profile I meant Level.

Reply
RE: Yes, they are accelerated. by Anand Lal Shimpi, 577 days ago
The problem is without support in 100% of the titles it's not something you can really count on. If you go with too slow of a CPU, hoping to rely on GPU acceleration but then try and play a rip that isn't accelerated you're just out of luck.

Regardless, I'm just waiting for the day when all platforms feature GPU acceleration :)

Take care,
Anand

Reply
Gaming Performance by MrBlastman, 577 days ago
I'd like to see them include the X2 6400 in the benchmarks as well. I see that they might be trying to get the pricing in line, but for an AMD user looking to upgrade, all I really am considering right now is a 6400, X3 or X4, nothing else.

The UT 3 benchmarks shed some hope for the Phenoms as they show with a properly coded game, the X4's can remain competitive. I still wish to this day they'd release 3+ GHz phenoms :(

Reply
Typo by Nehemoth, 577 days ago
...(or give up 200MHz and get a quad-core X3 9550 at the same price)...

Should be Quad-Core X4 no X3

Reply
More little hertz! by perzy, 577 days ago
Well unless the software is as well written as Unreal engine 3 (Tim Sweeney is a god),in 95% of the programs avrege Joe use (including windows itself) there is very little advantage even going from singlecore to dualcore!
Which brings me to my question: Whats really going on with the 'Heat wall' 'Frequenzy wall' or whatever you call it that Intel hit so hard in 2004(-ish) ? (remember the throttling superhot 3.8 GHz P4's ?)
What all users really need is higher frequenzy! Why arn't we getting it?


Reply
RE: More little hertz! by Clauzii, 577 days ago
The frequency wall can be considered like cooking the electrons off of the DIE-surface, which is not so good. High frequency=High heat. Now Youre thinking, "But IBM got 6GHz?". It's a different design philosophy: Simpler pipeline, faster frequency.

Until ALL programs/OSes support multi-threaded programs, we are bound to single-threaded OR the pseudo Hyperthreading which can do SOME multithreading, depending on the Code & Data used.

If I've used a 8 GHz machine to write this on, I would still only be able to see the cursor rate one pr. sec.

What I think we need are (even more!) intelligent CPUs (GPUs). If a CPU or GPU knew approx. what kind of performance and usage of power a program needs, a more sofisticated power scheme could be possible??

Until then, All I know is that evolution goes forward. Not always fast, but forward :)

Reply
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