Last month we looked at AMD's flagship Phenom X4 9850 processor. Now it's the turn of the X3 8750, the fastest of AMD's new triple-core range. It's tempting to think of these as quad-core processors with a failed core, because that's what they are. At this price, though, you can consider the 8750 as a 'buy two cores get one free' offer.
It's clear that AMD is pitching the Phenom X3 at potential Intel Core 2 Duo buyers, which puts the X3 8750 in direct competition with the £120 E8400. The E8400 has two cores running at 3GHz, while the X3 8750's three cores run at just 2.4GHz. Likewise, the Intel processor has 6MB of L2 cache while the AMD has just 1.5MB. It does, however, have 2MB of L3 cache to share between the three cores.
AMD's problem is that few applications can use more than two cores, making the third largely redundant. In our tests, the X3 8750's slower clock speed proved a hindrance to performance. It managed only 105 in our audio-encoding test, while the E8400 left it for dust with 160. Multitasking performance, which should be the Phenom's strong point, proved even more disappointing, with a score of only 138. The E8400 was significantly quicker with 242. Video encoding was the highlight, with a score of 365 - 40 points higher than the E8400's score.
By overclocking the FSB to 233, we were able to run our 8750 at 2.8GHz, which was the highest we could push it before it became unstable. At this speed it scored 232 overall, which is still behind the E8400's 249, but its video score rose to 417.
If video editing is a priority, and you're happy to overclock a brand new processor, the 8750 is good value. Otherwise, the E8400 is faster at standard speeds, making it a better choice for everyone else.
AM2+, 3 cores running at 2.4GHz, 200MHz (3,600MHz HyperTransport), 3x 128KB L1 cache, 3x 512KB L2 cacheAuthor: Jim Martin
AMD Phenom X3 8750