Introduction:
AMD, once the undisputed speed king, has in the past year suffered one setback after another.
First there was the lackluster release of the AM2 dubbed an evolution not a revolution the only real item that the AM2 gave us was DDR2 support and a reduction in the amount of cache that each CPU core had access to. Next came the Barcelona, the first native quad core CPU, and the issues around certain TLB errata that took AMD some time to fix (this fix included a performance hindering patch) this issue also leaked over into the Phenom line and resulted in one of the worst launches that AMD has ever had. AMD attempted to rally with a launch of a tri-core CPU making the claim that this was a separate design and not a quad with a failed core. Unfortunately it was discovered that this claim was not true, then it was also found that since these tri-cores were quads with a failed core they also suffered from the same TLB errata. AMD looks to be in a very bad way. However there appears to be light at the end of the long dark tunnel that AMD is in. This comes in the form of the newly released B3 stepping of both the Phenom X4 (Quad Core) and now the Phenom X3 (Tri Core). Will this latest release give us the performance that we want and used to expect from AMD? Or is this another step down the tunnel into darkness? We have a Phenom X3 8750 in the lab and are going to find out.
Product: AMD Phenom X3 (8750)
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: April 18th 2008
Product cost: $195.00
Manufacturer: AMD
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Jason Hambly, Paul Mercer
{mospagebreak title=Why Three Cores?}
Why Three Cores?
“…yes, but this one goes to 11…”
Many people have asked and indeed are still asking why three cores? What is wrong with just producing a Dual and a Quad line? These questions are further enhanced by the knowledge that the X3 is nothing more than an X4 with a single core disabled due to it failing QA at the FAB. One would wonder why you would want to sell your failures. AMD’s response to this is that they want to be able to provide a balanced line up for consumers. This gives them a line up with all cores numbers from two to four. But can the price/performance make the X3 worth the purchase? What market is this pointed at? Again AMD has a ready answer; this CPU is aimed at the market and environment right between the dual and quad segments. This is the mid-range user, the casual gamer and the HTPC enthusiast.
Here is an example:
Say you are looking to build an HTPC that you want to decode BluRay DVD on( for playback), can play a few games on and still have enough power and head room to encode your old DVDs to AVI without taking a couple of years. Most of us would not drop a $600 quad into a system like this nor would we grab up an 8800GTX for use in this system. But we might put in a dual core CPU only to find out that the average software driven BluRay player (CyberLink Power DVD) brings our inexpensive dual core to its knees. And that many games are looking for more power (on a UMA GPU setup) than the average dual core can offer. Here is where the X3 enters the game, it is a low cost CPU (the 2.4GHz X3 runs for $195.00) and have more power behind it than the same speed dual core CPU. If you drop this into a good UMA mainboard (see our evaluation of the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H), 4GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD you now have a very good HTPC system that will also give you good gaming performance (at 1024×768 to 1280×1024 resolutions). The X3 will also fit into the mid range casual gamers market in a similar situation you would be able to pick up the X3 for right around the same cost as a dual core and for less than a quad and still get enough power to run the games and apps you want.
With all this in mind the concept of the X3 makes sense but how does it perform in practice?
{mospagebreak title=It’s Just So Odd}
Trouble in Paradise?:
“you know that every silver lining has a grey cloud around it..”
Now there is something to bear in mind as you contemplate the purchase of the Phenom X3. That is the nature of multi-processing. As it stands now multi-processing is still setup to be symmetric; what this means is that most systems are going to look for extra CPUs in even pairs for SMP to work. Where does this leave the X3 and its odd-man-out core? Well it seems there are a few fixes out to cover this small (yet glaring) issue. Microsoft has released a hot fix for 32bit Vista and Server 2008 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950182/en-us) but not for the x64 version. This is a nice fix and appears to help with certain applications but it should be an update and not a fix that the end user has to go and get.
There are also fixes for other applications that experience the even core only problem, although I do not have a complete listing of them at the time. Still even with the fixes for the odd number of cores this small item will impact the sales and adoption of the X3 into the mainstream. Users that this CPU is aimed at will want to see instant performance. This is especially in light of the recent lackluster performance of AMD’s releases.
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{mospagebreak title=Performance I}
Performance:
Usually I would go into the technical details of the CPU listing its various features and merits.
However the B3 stepping of the X3 is not a new CPU so all of the technical details have been talked about ad nausem. The only really new item is the correction of the TLB errata that caused so much heart ache in the original releases.
So with all of that out of the way let’s dive into performance: Prior to this evaluation I asked the readers of our forum what types of performance tests they wanted to see the Phenom X3 run through. As you can imagine it was a long list, I have selected a few out of the group and present them here for you.
Test System (HTPC/Entry)
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H mainboard
AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4GHz
2GB Kingston KHX7200D2K2/2G
Western Digital 74GB 10k RPM Raptor HDD
Mushkin 1.1KW PSU
Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64
The test system was put together with the HTPC/ entry level user in mind.
I will be following this up with the X3 on a 790FX board to see if it can handle high-end applications as well.
The tests:
I know you are eager to see what types of hoops I m going to make the X3 jump through.
The list is a little longer than I would normally use but I hope it will give a very good indication of the type of performance you can expect from the Phenom X3.
Futuremark:
What evaluation would be complete without one of Futuremark’s tests? Even though no synthetic test can ever replace real-world performance testing we all have a love for the number that we get at the end of running one of these tests (well those of us with high number love them).
I decided to use both 3DMark06 and PCMark Vantage in my testing as they both show different sides of CPU and system performance.
3DMark06:
My interest here is the CPU score, it looks like the X3 was able to gain a roughly 1000 point lead on the X2 5000+ despite being clocked 200MHz slower.
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8750-X3 |
X2-5000+ |
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PCMark Vantage:
Again we see the performance advantage of the X3 and its extra core.
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8750-X3 |
x64-32Bit |
x64-64Bit |
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X2-5000+ |
x64-32Bit |
x64-64Bit |
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HyperPi 0.99b
This test another synthetic that spits out numbers at you (the number Pi calculated out to a ridiculous number of decimal places). It runs by spawning multiple instances of SuperPi Mod (from Xtremesystems.com) one for each core. The reason I use this is to test the speed and stability of data transfer between the CPU, memory and HDD. If there are any issues between these three critical components you are going to see it. Either your number will be way off or the test will simply fail. HyperPi is also good for checking the performance of each core if you have a weak core it will run this calculation slower than the other cores.
| 8750-X3 | |
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32M |
1M |
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| X2-5000+ | |
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32M |
1M |
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The X3 also manages to outperform the X2 and shows more consistent performance across multiple cores.
Video Encoding:
Video encoding is something that is becoming more and more popular. Encoding applications are everywhere on the Internet now and with Hard Drive sizes reaching into the terabytes it is not surprising that many people are backing up their DVD collections to disk. For my testing I used AutoGK to encode a 2 hour movie. I maintained the same video quality (100% quality) and audio format and encoded to Xvid AVI format.
| X2 5000+ BE | 1.16.58 |
| 8750 X3 | 1.05.27 |
Time in Hours, Minutes, and Seconds (lower is better)
The X3 managed to knock ten minutes off of the encoding time over the X2 5000+ This is primarily due to having the extra core in play.
Cinebench R10.0
Cinebench is a testing suite from Maxon (makers of Cinema4D) and is designed to test your systems ability to work with Cinema4D. It included two CPU based render tests (single core and multi-core) as well as an OpenGL test to determine if your GPU is powerful enough.
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8750-X3 |
X2-5000+ |
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Here in Cinebench we see the performance pattern continue. The X3 8750 performs better on single core performance and, of course, in multi-core performance.
{mospagebreak title=Performance II}
Lightwave 9.0
Lightwave is not actually a benchmark but it a 3D animation software that allows you to create 3d animated models from the ground up and then to animate them. Lightwave has gone from being an Intel only product to an AMD optimized product and is now somewhere in the middle. With both sides seeing performance comparative to the actual speed of the CPU. For my testing I used the Space Station scene from the Lightwave 8.0 media set. My render was of frame 32 only with output set to 1080p HD resolution; AntiAliasing was performed using a PLD 5 Pass run with motion blur set to Gaussian sharp. Threads were set to 2 and 4 with segment memory at 128MB.
Two Threads:
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8750-X3 |
X2-5000+ |
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Four Threads:
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8750-X3 |
X2-5000+ |
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Here was an interesting test. When I ran Lightwave with two threads on the X3 my times were only marginally faster than the 5000+, but when I changed the threads to four for the X3 the improvement was significantly better, I would not have expected that type of performance increase from just having a single extra core available.
Sisoft’s Sandra Pro:
Although not an indication of real world performance Sandra can provide you with a set of numbers that indicate your system’s raw performance.
For testing I only ran the CPU tests, including the Multi-Core efficiency test.
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8750-X3 |
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X2-5000+ |
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My results here were mixed; it is obvious that the X3 is a better performer and that this increase is due to the extra core, however when I ran the multi-core efficiency test the X3 8750 was only marginally better. I was surprised as I would have thought the new HT3.0 and Phenom design would have dramatically improved multi-core efficiency, but it would seem there was only a small improvement.
POVRay:
POVRay stands for Persistence of Vision RayTracer and is another 3D graphics application.
It also has a pretty nice render test that can utilize multiple cores. This test is a pretty good indication of the rendering power of your CPU.
| X2 5000+ BE | 844.09 |
| 8750 X3 | 1178.24 |
No big surprises here the X3 out runs the X2 by quite a bit, again that extra core shows it value.
Passmark 6.1:
Passmark is sort of a combination between PCMark and Sandra. It allows for synthetic testing of your whole system or specific subsystems. I ran the CPU related tests to get a good feel for how the 8750 X3 would perform.
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8750-X3 |
X2-5000+ |
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Photoshop CS3 filter testing:
Although Photoshop is not what you would call an entry level product, it is an industry standard one and for that reason can be used to give us a base line performance test to determine how well a CPU (or system) can handle image manipulation. For this test I ran the Driver Heaven (driverheaven.net) Photoshop test.
| 8750 X3 | 5000+ | |
| Texturiser Test -1 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
| CMYK Color Conversion | 1.4 | 2.5 |
| RGB Color Conversion | 1.6 | 3 |
| Dust and Scratches | 1.9 | 2.2 |
| Water Color | 16.2 | 16.9 |
| Texturiser Test -2 | 1.9 | 3 |
| Stained Glass | 6 | 7.8 |
| Litghing Effects | 2.9 | 3.8 |
| Mosaic Tiles | 12.1 | 15.4 |
| Extrude | 48.1 | 48.2 |
| Smart Blur | 34.9 | 42.9 |
| Underpainting | 17.7 | 24.3 |
| Total | 146.3 | 171.7 |
Time in Seconds (lower is Better)
The story is the same in Photoshop CS3, the X3 handily outperforms the X2 5000+
{mospagebreak title=Performance III}
Gaming Tests:
Gaming is going to rear its head in just about any evaluation. Even while testing server related hardware I have been asked if it could be used for gaming. The Phenom X3 is not meant as a top end CPU for gaming but is intended for use by the “casual gamer” not the hardcore 1337 gamers out there. But even with its target being the mid range gaming market the Phenom X3 needs to be able to handle the latest games. Someone might not need 1920×1200 resolution, but might still want to play Call of Duty 4 or might just want the extras found in Company of Heroes.
I used four fairly current titles and out of those I picked 2 First Person Shooters (one of which needed to be a DX10 game), one Third Person Driving game and a Real Time Strategy game. I felt this would cover the majority of game types that people would be interested in.
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare:
This is as the name would suggest the fourth installment in the Call of Duty series. As the name also suggests you are placed in a modern environment. During the game you play multiple rolls and go thought various covert and low-level combat situations. Game play can be almost nerve-wracking at times where you rush through the usual “bar-fight” AI that COD is so fond of. The graphics are a tad on the cartoonish side but that is overshadowed by the great story line and immersive game play. For my testing I ran through the Crew Expendable mission and measures the frame rates using FRAPS 2.9.4
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| Min | Max | Ave | |
| X2 5000+ | 12 | 28 | 18.998 |
| 8750 X3 | 13 | 32 | 21.922 |
In Call of Duty Modern Warfare the X3 did not beat out the X2-5000+ by much in terms of frame rate but it was a much smoother game with the X3 in than with the X2.
Bioshock:
This title from Looking Glass Studios is great game and follows in the tradition as SystemShock and SystemShock II where you play the unwitting pawn of the bad guy, but redeem yourself in the end as you thwart their plans and destroy them. Graphic are very well done with a DX10 surfaces options that add a little more atmosphere to the game and workload on your GPU.
I ran the Welcome to Rapture level up to where you first see the Big Daddy and the Daughter.
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| Min | Max | Ave | |
| X2 5000+ | 6 | 19 | 10.427 |
| 8750 X3 | 6 | 23 | 12.307 |
The first thing you will notice here is the truly awful DX10 performance that the 780G offers. Although AMD uses the 780G to show an integrated UMA GPU with DX10 support the performance is not there to justify the claim. Granted there is Hybrid Graphics that I have yet to test out. This may be the saving grace of the 780G, as I mentioned that is yet to be seen. However there is still the fact that the X3 was able to eke out an additional 2 frames per second over the X2 and the game play went from choppy and unplayable to merely sluggish.
DiRT:
Colin McRae’s DiRT is an rather fun driving game that puts you in a fairly accurate simulation of a rally car race. The graphics and physics are well done as is the AI of the other drivers in the game. For testing I used Rally World to run a single track with three laps.
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| Min | Max | Ave | |
| X2 5000+ | 16 | 25 | 19.022 |
| 8750 X3 | 17 | 29 | 23.259 |
The 8750 X3 is the winner here again with a small FPS increase but more to the point in the overall playability of the game. With the X2 5000+ the game seemed to be slow and unresponsive; with the X3 there was a new spring to the game.
Company of Heroes:
Company of Heroes is a semi historical real time strategy game that puts you in command of a company during the World War II. You start off on the beaches of Normandy and fight your way inland. The graphics are surprisingly good and the enemy AI also well done. For my testing I ran the Normandy level from after you get through the barbed wire at the shingle all the way to the destruction of all of the 88s.
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| Min | Max | Ave | |
| X2 5000+ | 11 | 32 | 20.671 |
| 8750 X3 | 13 | 35 | 25.335 |
One more time, the 8750 X3 takes the show. Showing the largest performance improvement of the four games I tested. Again not just in the smoothness of the frames but in overall responsiveness.
{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
I know that many of you will be wondering why I did not include a comparison with an Intel C2D. The honest truth is that I did not have time. I wanted to get this out to you on time and did not have a comparable board for Intel that was a close match for the UMA 780G board I was using. As soon as I have that board in, rest assured that I will be running these tests again. I also did not have time to explore the overclocking potential of the X3 or how well it performs on higher-end hardware. This too will also have to be a future article. The comparison that I did use was impressive none the less. The X3 consistently outperformed the higher clocked X2 5000+. Some of this will be due to the better memory controller in the Phenom and also the use of HT3 but for the most part the simple addition of a third core put the X3 way out in front. To gain almost 1000 point in PCMark is no easy task. Even 3dMark06 showed an impressive improvement in overall and CPU score. Photoshop testing also showed a healthy improvement indicating that the X3 has much more headroom for image manipulation. Looking at the results I have in hand here I can say that the new B3 stepping is an improvement and a step in the right direction. I was even impressed at how well the three cores were put to use, I was expecting to see a number of these tests not even touch the third core but all of them used it and all showed an improvement. This opens up an interesting market to the mi range and value market. The Phenom X3 showed us that it has enough raw horse power to run applications like Lightwave at an acceptable level. How many students might consider this CPU over a more expensive Intel system to get the performance they need out of the CPU so that they have the extra money to spend on RAM, HDDs and Video cards? AMD has given us something new to think about there.
AMD might not have completely plugged the leak in their performance boat but they have seriously stemmed the flow with this new stepping of the Phenom X3 and possibly opened up a new midrange market.
Discuss this review here
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank folks at AMD (especially Damon Muzny) for their help in getting this evaluation put together