AMD Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition Utica MI

Launched six months after the original quad-core Phenom X4 CPUs, the Phenom X3 series was designed to fill a very specific niche. The theory was that if you couldn't afford a quad-core CPU, but wanted more performance than a dual-core CPU could deliver, you might be interested in buying a triple-core CPU.

As such, the Phenom X3 8750 is the only CPU with more than two cores available for less than £100. The Phenom X3's Toliman core is based on the Agena core used in the first Phenom processors, with one of the four cores disabled. Each of the three cores is clocked at 2.4GHz, and has 128KB of Level 1 cache, 512KB of Level 2 cache and shared access to 2MB of Level 3 cache. As this is a Black Edition model, the CPU multiplier is unlocked, so the chip can be easily overclocked without having to worry about configuring the frequency of the HTT or RAM.

While in theory there's nothing wrong with a triple-core CPU, the Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition is a little like all compromises - a jack of all trades, but a master of none. For example, its overall score of 813 in our Media Benchmarks is significantly slower than several of AMD's own cheaper dual-core processors, such as the Athlon X2 6400+ and 7750+. The Phenom X3 is also slower than these CPUs in games, only managing to edge ahead in the highly multithreaded Cinebench and WPrime tests.

By increasing the CPU multiplier from 12 to 15 and the vcore to 1.4V, we overclocked the Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition from 2.4GHz to 3GHz. Although this significantly improved its performance, it was still unable to beat the overclocked Athlon X2s in most tests.

The Phenom X3 8750 is inferior in almost every regard to the cheaper Athlon X2 series, and the similarly priced Core 2 Duo E7300 and cheaper Pentium E5200 (see p66) are even faster than AMD's dual-core CPUs. As such, you'd be better off buying a dual-core CPU.

Author: James Gorbold & Antony Leather

AMD Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition