AMD's Athlon II X3 435 & New Energy Efficient CPUs: Killing Intel Below $90
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 20, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
A month ago AMD introduced the world’s first quad-core processor to debut at $99. Last week, AMD announced its third quarter earnings for 2009. While the company as a whole lost money, the Product Company (CPU and GPU design) turned a small profit. I don’t want to say that the worst is behind AMD, but things are definitely looking up.
| Income | Q3 2009 | Q2 2009 | Q1 2009 |
| AMD | -$128 Million | -$330 Million | -$416 Million |
| AMD Product Company | +$2 Million | -$244 Million | -$308 Million |
And for the consumer, AMD is providing a ton of value these days. You're getting more transistors per dollar than Intel will give you, and it's not just bloat, these things are fast:
| Processor | Cores | Manufacturing Process | L1 Cache | L2 Cache | L3 Cache | Die Size | Transistor Count |
| AMD Phenom II X4 | 4 | 45nm | 128KB per core | 512KB per core | 6MB | 258 mm2 | 758M |
| AMD Athlon II X4/X3 | 4 | 45nm | 128KB per core | 512KB per core | 0MB | 169 mm2 | 300M |
| AMD Athlon II X2 | 2 | 45nm | 128KB per core | 1MB per core | 0MB | 117 mm2 | 234M |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8xxx | 4 | 45nm | 64KB per core | 4MB | 0MB | 164 mm2 | 456M |
| Intel Pentium E6xxx | 2 | 45nm | 64KB per core | 2MB | 0MB | 82 mm2 | 228M |
The value train continues with todays introduction of the first triple core Athlon II processors: the Athlon II X3 435 and 425. Clocked at 2.9GHz and 2.7GHz respectively, these processors are simply Athlon II X4s with one core disabled.
They’re also quite affordable. The 435 will set you back $87 while the 425 costs $76. This puts them on par with Intel’s Pentium E6000 series dual core processors, but cheaper than the Core 2 Duo E7500. This has been AMD’s high end dual core strategy for the Phenom’s life: sell three cores for the price of two. And in the past, it has worked.
| Processor | Clock Speed | L2 Cache | L3 Cache | TDP | Price |
| AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | 3.4GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 140W | $245 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE | 3.2GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 125W | $245 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 945 | 3.0GHz | 2MB | 6MB | 125W | $225 |
| AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE | 2.8GHz | 1.5MB | 6MB | 95W | $145 |
| AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE | 3.1GHz | 1MB | 6MB | 80W | $105 |
| AMD Athlon II X4 630 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | 0MB | 95W | $122 |
| AMD Athlon II X4 620 | 2.6GHz | 2MB | 0MB | 95W | $99 |
| AMD Athlon II X3 435 | 2.9GHz | 1.5MB | 0MB | 95W | $87 |
| AMD Athlon II X3 425 | 2.7GHz | 1.5MB | 0MB | 95W | $76 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 250 | 3.0GHz | 2MB | 0MB | 65W | $87 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 245 | 2.9GHz | 2MB | 0MB | 65W | $66 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 240 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | 0MB | 65W | $60 |
The X3s AMD is announcing today are clocked high enough that you still have good performance in single threaded applications, and in those that can take advantage of three cores you’re almost guaranteed to have better performance than the Intel alternative.
The real question you have to ask is whether it makes more sense to spend a little more than get a quad-core processor or not.
The Athlon II X3s are 45nm 95W TDP parts and work in both Socket-AM2+ and Socket-AM3 motherboards. As I mentioned before, these are architecturally identical to the X4s just with one core disabled. That means you get a 512KB L2 per core but no L3 cache.
I’ll spoil the surprise for you here: they’re faster than the equivalently priced Intel CPUs in most cases, but that’s not too surprising.
The Athlon II X3 435 is a bit more overclockable than the X4 620. Without any additional voltage we got 3.25GHz on our 620 sample, but our 435 yielded 3.33GHz:
With an extra ~15% voltage we could get 3.63GHz:
AMD is also introducing a slew of energy efficient Athlon IIs as well. They’re all in the table below:
| Processor | Clock Speed | L2 Cache | TDP | Price | Premium |
| AMD Athlon II X4 605e | 2.3GHz | 2MB | 45W | $143 | +$44 |
| AMD Athlon II X4 600e | 2.2GHz | 2MB | 45W | $133 | +$34 |
| AMD Athlon II X3 405e | 2.3GHz | 1.5MB | 45W | $102 | +$26 |
| AMD Athlon II X3 400e | 2.2GHz | 1.5MB | 45W | $97 | +$21 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 240e | 2.8GHz | 2MB | 45W | $77 | +$17 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 235e | 2.7GHz | 2MB | 45W | $69 | +$9 |
These energy efficient processors are binned for lower voltages and thus have a 45W TDP. Unfortunately you do sacrifice clock speed in some cases as a result. There's also a hefty price premium, at the high end you lose clock speed and pay 44% more for a 45W TDP.
The Test
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X48 Intel X58 AMD 790FX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 2 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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ecvs85 - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
maddoctor in real life must be a women who just dumped by her boyfriend that works in AMD's CPU development team :)maddoctor - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
Intel products are cheaper. Price/performance ration is more favourable to Intel products. Only AMDiot will like AMD products.SunSamurai - Sunday, November 1, 2009 - link
Without AMD, intel would not have cheap processors. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT IDIOT?StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
[quote]Intel products are cheaper. Price/performance ration is more favourable to Intel products. Only AMDiot will like AMD products.[/quote]Both company's are good, and both have good price/performance depending on the targeted market demographic.
Lunyone - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
I like that AMD is bringing out a x3 based off of the Athlon II's. This makes sense, so they can sell more chips/wafer. I think for the $12 difference I'd rather have the x4 620, but that is just me. I do like that they have come out with more power friendly CPU's too, especially for those thinking of a quieter HTPC!! I know that the Intel CPU's generally OC better, but most people don't OC at all so having a cheaper/better based clocked CPU is a win/win for consumers. Maybe we'll see a price drop during the Christmas rush, maybe not.sinshixxi - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - link
yea $12 diff com'on, who gonna save it for x3. Maybe lower grade x3 the $76 would have an edge comparing to $99 x4. $22 I wouldn't save it. $99 x4 just simply kick ass.Sledge hammer - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
this triple core outperforms the intel E8400 and E8500 that cost 100 dollars more.http://www.guru3d.com/article/athlon-ii-x3-435-pro...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/athlon-ii-x3-435-pro...
coldpower27 - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
That is Intel's Premium Dual Core line, it's no longer the best price/performance ratio in relation to Intel's own products.there are cheaper alternatives...
You can get pretty much the same performance with the E7600 and a little bit less with the E7500 vs the E8000's. So the difference is reduced to around 50 USD.
The thing is those processors are barely 82mm2 and cost 130-150USD vs the 169mm2 90USD processor, Intel's margin is simply way higher.
Intel doesn't really compete in the Tri-Core space really. It'a niche AMD gets to enjoy because Intel has no interest in competing there for now.
- Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
I think most folk can’t see the potential paradigm shift of the direction AMD is moving, all the while remaining consistent to their eccobeliefs- "less power more production". Their Opteron multicore processor stresses low power with multiple cores- I think it’s clear looking at the Opteron and their other recent chips that AMD is not competing with Intel for the top speed honors or the fastest Giga chip. We have also seen perhaps closer relationships between AMD Apple, AMD Microsoft directly connected by AMDs graphic card products 4000 series, OpenCL, directX11, direct Compute... The giga-chip wars are over, AMD has been preparing for the end-of-day future is now, for a while now. It’s no longer about pumping the power of the CPU, because all the processing power one ever needs goes unused; we've all had this river of untapped processing power in our computers for some time now. The power is in the GPU; coupled with current low watt multicore processors, while using OpenCl, DirectX11, direct-compute, CPU-GPU becomes both the redeemer and the grim reaper at the same time. The second stage is the bonding between GPU & CPU- LlanoOn another note- I personally don’t believe Larrabee will be developed in time, if at all work as promised. I belive they were late in seeing
- Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
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