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.