About to pull the trigger on an upgrade through Microcenter but not sure which processor to get. THey are offering both the Athlon 2 X4 and the Phenom 2 X3 at $99.00. Which one would be faster? Most of what I am doing is business applications, media streaming, hidef video, and maybe an hour or two of light gaming. What do you guys think would serve me best? Appreciate any advice.
Athlon 2 X4 or Phenom 2 X3??
- Thread starter lokni
- Start date
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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Phenom II's extra cache is beneficial to gaming. If you aren't gaming (much), then get the Athlon II X4. Desktop workloads will benefit more.
DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
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It will make a big difference which Athlon II x4 they are offering and whether or not you overclock. The Propus chips (Athlon II x4) not only lack L3 cache, but are usually more difficult to overclock than any of the Phenom II chips. If it's the x4 620, you may not be able to push it past 3.3-3.5 ghz no matter how hard you try. The 630 and 635 can reach higher clockspeeds, but my guess is that the x3 will go higher.
Obviously the Phenom II x3 will be a better buy if you can get the last core to unlock and remain stable. Not everyone has luck with this, but the success rate is around %70 or so.
If you are not interested in overclocking or unlocking cores, then it's going to come down to which apps you want to run. Anything that is mostly optimized for dual-core processors (or processors with fewer cores) will do better on the x3. Anything that spawns 4 threads or more will probably do better on the Athlon II x4. It would really help if you told us which models they are so someone can try to find applicable benchmarks.
Obviously the Phenom II x3 will be a better buy if you can get the last core to unlock and remain stable. Not everyone has luck with this, but the success rate is around %70 or so.
If you are not interested in overclocking or unlocking cores, then it's going to come down to which apps you want to run. Anything that is mostly optimized for dual-core processors (or processors with fewer cores) will do better on the x3. Anything that spawns 4 threads or more will probably do better on the Athlon II x4. It would really help if you told us which models they are so someone can try to find applicable benchmarks.
BD231
Lifer
- Feb 26, 2001
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In order to make your choice you need to understand the purpose of the Athlon II, and that was to bring quad core processing into the value market.
As you can see in this link ... ~> http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Prod....36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.44.45.46.47.48.49.50
... there is absolutely no way to justify purchasing an X4 over the Phenom II X3 if given the option. Whatever performance advantage is gained with an added core is clearly destroyed by the lack of L3 cache. That truth will grow over time as newer applications come out that suck up an ever increasing amount of system resource.
The Athlon II is the Celeron of quad cores, garbage in other words :sneaky:.
As you can see in this link ... ~> http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Prod....36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.44.45.46.47.48.49.50
... there is absolutely no way to justify purchasing an X4 over the Phenom II X3 if given the option. Whatever performance advantage is gained with an added core is clearly destroyed by the lack of L3 cache. That truth will grow over time as newer applications come out that suck up an ever increasing amount of system resource.
The Athlon II is the Celeron of quad cores, garbage in other words :sneaky:.
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That's an absolutely unfair comparison, speed-wise or cost-wise.
Let me show you a similar comparison based on your own link ... ~> http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/122?vs=84
Does the L3 cache destroy the added core or the added core destroy the L3 cache?
Tom
DrMrLordX
Lifer
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I don't know that it's really fair to bag on Propus that much. Yeah, the lack of L3 hurts, but at least my 635 could hit ridiculously-high NB speeds which did a lot to offset performance problems. It could be very easy to pick up an X3 that would top out at around 2.4 ghz NB, though I have no idea where the average NB ceiling for a Propus would lie.
In a lot of these reviews, it seems like they don't touch the NB at all (which I guess makes sense since doing so is overclocking), or if they do, they don't take it very far.
But take the x4 635 and jack the NB up to 2.9 ghz (where mine can go) vs a 2.8 ghz x3 with, say, 2.4 ghz NB, and the picture would look a bit less clear.
In a lot of these reviews, it seems like they don't touch the NB at all (which I guess makes sense since doing so is overclocking), or if they do, they don't take it very far.
But take the x4 635 and jack the NB up to 2.9 ghz (where mine can go) vs a 2.8 ghz x3 with, say, 2.4 ghz NB, and the picture would look a bit less clear.
BD231
Lifer
- Feb 26, 2001
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Many have stated you don't see much (if any) gain on the Athlon 2's when overlocking the HT bus. I just don't see a point to sacrificing L3 when you could pay the same for an x3 which overlocks better on average and will net you more performance at stock settings; and even more so when overlocked due to reduced L3 latency. Not to mention offer you a chance at that fourth core making it a full fledged X4 with all cache intact.
Remember, benchmarks show that when you start overlocking that lack of L3 really hurts; especially gaming. I won't deny for a minute that there's value in the Athlon II, but I firmly believe having 3 cores that can breath with an L3 is the better option. The numbers don't lie.
Someone could get 290 HT like you, or a dead board like isandu who went for 300 this week
Remember, benchmarks show that when you start overlocking that lack of L3 really hurts; especially gaming. I won't deny for a minute that there's value in the Athlon II, but I firmly believe having 3 cores that can breath with an L3 is the better option. The numbers don't lie.
Someone could get 290 HT like you, or a dead board like isandu who went for 300 this week
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Many have stated you don't see much (if any) gain on the Athlon 2's when overlocking the HT bus. I just don't see a point to sacrificing L3 when you could pay the same for an x3 which overlocks better on average and will net you more performance at stock settings; and even more so when overlocked due to reduced L3 latency.
Remember, benchmarks show that when you start overlocking that lack of L3 really hurts; especially gaming. I won't deny for a minute that there's value in the Athlon II, but I firmly believe having 3 cores that can breath with an L3 is the better option. The numbers don't lie.
Someone could get 290 HT like you, or a dead board like that other poster who went for 300 this week
Price plays a factor in this too, and so does specific usage of the processor. With this microcenter deal, they are the same price, so in many cases the X3 would be better. If your shopping off newegg, they only carry oem Phenom II X3 any more, which cost more than an Athlon II X4. Than to top that off you need to purchase an aftermarket cooler whether overclocking or not pushing the price up even higher. For what I do, I took the X4, but if this was a gaming only system with a video card better than a 4670, I'd probably grab the X3.
BD231
Lifer
- Feb 26, 2001
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Don't deny that tom recommended a 130 dollar part when a Pii x4 955 is only 30 dollars more. Now do you understand why I think the Athlon two is crap? If it were sixty bucks at those speeds then I'd be all for it but its not.
Chance's are the OP won't get anything higher than a 620 out of that microcenter deal, its really not that impressive.
Its cachetrated (pun intended); and doesn't exactly cost that much less. That's just my .02 though.
Chance's are the OP won't get anything higher than a 620 out of that microcenter deal, its really not that impressive.
Its cachetrated (pun intended); and doesn't exactly cost that much less. That's just my .02 though.
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DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
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It's not about running up HTT speeds, it's about running up the NB speed. I actually did some benching for a user here who will hopefully be releasing the numbers he's gathered here which will show just what NB speed increases can and can't do.
The x3 does lose some benchmarks to a Propus at about the same clockspeeds, especially those that actually tax 4 cores. What most of us should know by now is that a lot of multi-threaded apps out there (and benchmarks) struggle to utilize more than 2-3 cores, and in those situations, the x3 really loses nothing by having one fewer core, especially when you're in an isolated benchmark situation where you don't have many background threads to handle.
Cache helps chips scale upwards in clockspeed, but only if the cache can keep up. If you can't clock the NB very high on an x3, it loses some of that scaling advantage.
If you can get the fourth core to unlock, then it's really no contest. Not everyone can, but the odds are surprisingly good.
Of course it does. It also hurts when people overclock their core speed but leave their NB speed alone (thus effectively increasing their L3 latency as measured in cycles). The L3-less K10s are extremely sensitive to system memory latency, so if you can shore that up, the disadvantage goes away by a bit. If the memory controllers on those damn chips weren't such a pain-in-the-ass to work with, it'd be okay, but you can at least compensate by raising NB speeds which has a surprising effect on system memory read, write, and latency when there is no L3 present.
I would argue that, for Propus at least, overclocking makes things better because it gives you a chance to tweak the NB and RAM to compensate for the lack of L3 cache that is a problem even at stock speeds. If all you do is jack up core speeds, then things won't go so well.
Someone could get 290 HT like you, or a dead board like isandu who went for 300 this week
I've actually gotten higher than 290 HTT on this board (when using a reduced NB multiplier). Isandu merely made a strong argument for not leaving the CMOS jumper in the clear position, that's all . . . poor guy.
BD231
Lifer
- Feb 26, 2001
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My mistake, i was speaking of the northbridge:
Many have stated you don't see much (if any) gain on the Athlon II's when overlocking the memory bus
A ramped up north bridge dose a lot for the Phenom II, but not nearly as much for the Athlon II. This was of course concluded through a barrage of benchmarks (purely numbers), but I wouldn't be surprised if the increase made for a snappier system.
I've never seen numbers on a Northbridge running at 290 myself so if you do happen to get some contrasting info from your buddy (stock vs 290) be sure to let me know, I'd be interested in seeing those.
As it stands, the Athlon II is bottle necked by cache and there's a greater performance increase on the Phenom II clock for clock when overclocking; the reason you don't eek out more FPS in games when jacking up the NB on an athlon II.
Many have stated you don't see much (if any) gain on the Athlon II's when overlocking the memory bus
A ramped up north bridge dose a lot for the Phenom II, but not nearly as much for the Athlon II. This was of course concluded through a barrage of benchmarks (purely numbers), but I wouldn't be surprised if the increase made for a snappier system.
I've never seen numbers on a Northbridge running at 290 myself so if you do happen to get some contrasting info from your buddy (stock vs 290) be sure to let me know, I'd be interested in seeing those.
As it stands, the Athlon II is bottle necked by cache and there's a greater performance increase on the Phenom II clock for clock when overclocking; the reason you don't eek out more FPS in games when jacking up the NB on an athlon II.
TurtleCrusher
Lifer
- Apr 20, 2008
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Excluding 3dsmax, the Athlon X4 trades blows back and forth or remains just a tiny bit slower than the Phenom X3. In applications that can actually use four cores effectively (video encoding), the Athlon X4 is nearly 35% faster. I'd go with the quad as it's far more future resistant. Applications will only scale better from here on out.
Arkaign
Lifer
- Oct 27, 2006
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Well, this came up fairly recently, Fry's has been having specials where you can get a Retail Propus 630 + Biostar AM2+ Mobo for $80, no rebate. It worked out well for the guy who already had 4gb of DDR2
For someone on a budget, this is DEFINITELY the way to go compared to spending $99 on a chip and then ~$60+ for a comparable entry-level AM2+ mobo. It's even more important for a gamer on a set budget, as in the ~$600 total budget scenario the $80 combo allowed for the purchase of a 5850 vs. just a 5770, which means that even if you compared the Propus w/5850 to a dual i7-980X system w/5770, the 5850 system would game better.
The deals constantly change though. Although I've seen the $80 Propus combo several times, it's not there the past few days. Some recent highlights :
C2D E7500 + Gigabyte P43 mobo $90 (meh, S775 is good but not worth buying for new system anymore)
Athlon II X2 250 + Biostar AM2+ Mobo $45 (killer for a cheap box)
i3-540 + Gigabyte H55 Mobo $99 (this makes so much more sense than that E7500 it's silly, this is a good mobo w/HDMI+DisplayPort as well)
PhII X4 965 BE + Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2 $150 (awesome value here, easy OC to ~3.8ghz+, and a great mobo)
For someone on a budget, this is DEFINITELY the way to go compared to spending $99 on a chip and then ~$60+ for a comparable entry-level AM2+ mobo. It's even more important for a gamer on a set budget, as in the ~$600 total budget scenario the $80 combo allowed for the purchase of a 5850 vs. just a 5770, which means that even if you compared the Propus w/5850 to a dual i7-980X system w/5770, the 5850 system would game better.
The deals constantly change though. Although I've seen the $80 Propus combo several times, it's not there the past few days. Some recent highlights :
C2D E7500 + Gigabyte P43 mobo $90 (meh, S775 is good but not worth buying for new system anymore)
Athlon II X2 250 + Biostar AM2+ Mobo $45 (killer for a cheap box)
i3-540 + Gigabyte H55 Mobo $99 (this makes so much more sense than that E7500 it's silly, this is a good mobo w/HDMI+DisplayPort as well)
PhII X4 965 BE + Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2 $150 (awesome value here, easy OC to ~3.8ghz+, and a great mobo)
DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
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I'm honestly interested in seeing his Rana numbers (it's Formulav8 btw). What was surprising to me is that increased NB speed had an . . . unexpected effect on system memory read, write, and latency. I was only expecting latency.
For what it's worth, at 3.7 ghz with 2850 mhz NB and DDR3-1520 6-7-5-15 1T:
Everest Read: 10597 Write: 5325 Latency: 37.0 ns
If you drop the NB to 1995 mhz:
Everest Read: 9093 Write: 4617 Latency: 41.2 ns
Ouch! That's quite a hit, especially on the read speeds. Take the synthetic for what it's worth, but still . . .
Now if only I could get DDR3-1800 CAS 6 stable on this chip (yeah, right), then we would have some good memory numbers. You can do that on a C3 Phenom II, but on a Propus? No way. Not the way they are right now. Maybe the 640/645 will fix that, but by then, everyone will be moving on to Thuban chips, and for good reason.
edit: Actually, since he's probably putting together charts and things, I'll just dump my raw testing data here for your perusal. And yes, it's not a massive increase in performance, but there was more there than I really expected, especially considering how low the memory speed is:
This is pretty much how it goes when you're trying to squeeze performance out of a system by increasing system memory speeds. The nice thing about it is that you get performance across the board, even when you're dealing with applications that have a large memory footprint and large working set. What made very little sense to me is that NB speed bumps would boost memory read or write speeds at all; there is certain to be a good reason for this, but I'd rather not make myself look stupid guessing wildly at what that might be.
Also, if you will notice, my single CPU scores in Cinebench R10 are a tad . . . anomalous? I shrugged those off since the x CPU numbers seem to make more sense.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Sadly, there are a lot of multi-threaded apps out there that just don't hit 4 cores very hard. Yet. Obviously there are some, such as encoding, which is one of the few CPU-intensive things I actually do.
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Thanks guys for all of the good info. I think as we get into all of these different number of cores, different memory speeds, and stuff like that it is getting more complicated to choose the right hardware for your needs. It sounds to me like the phenom is going to be the best way to go. I think though that I am going to wait for the next killer Frys deal on a Phenom instead of going with the Microcenter deal. Its going to be the same amount of money for a less feature rich motherboard and a slower processor.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/2836
Processor SYSMark 2007 Overall E-Learning Video Creation Productivity 3D
AMD Phenom II X4 920 (2.8GHz) 173 151 212 167 167
AMD Athlon II X4 630 (2.8GHz) 157 128 221 131 162
% of Phenom II X4 91% 85% 104% 78% 97%
difference is there, but is marginal
depends on whats more important to you, if its video creation etc.. more cores win
Considering your intended usage, neither processor will be particularly stressed. Theoretical performance numbers and benchmarks with colorful charts and whatnot are fun to look at, but try not to get too caught up nitpicking the details. Pick one, be happy, have shiny new computer.
I think your usage pattern is similar to mine, I personally went with x4 because that extra core really helps when it comes to running several apps at the same time especially when virus scanning is going on this extra core is worth more to you in multi app situations than the extra cache of x3. as for gaming I only play some older games with a 4850 which the x4 is capable of maxing out.
I have a 720 and I love it, its good at muti tasking and its great for gaming + its really good value
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