Athlon II X4 620 vs. Phenom II X2 545

[teclis1023]

Hi Anandtech,

First of all, yes, I have read the "Quad Core vs. Dual Core" sticky.

I'm building a new PC, and I'm looking for an inexpensive processor. As the title indicates, I'm selecting between the following:

• Athlon II X4 620 (2.6GHz, 2MB L2, 0MB L3)
  Phenom II X3 710 (2.6GHz, 1.5MB L2, 6MB L3)
  Phenom II X2 545 (3.0GHz, 1MB L2, 6MB L3).

I'm neither a power-gamer nor a power-user; however, I do enjoy games from time to time. I will have a Radeon 4870 512MB in there to take care of games such as Left 4 Dead, Crysis and a few others. While I'm not a power-gamer, I do want future flexibility with gaming choices! (Hey - even graduate students like to have fun ) I also use Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator from time to time. Other uses will include small amounts of virtualization, a bit of archiving, and other various tasks.

I'm inclined to go for the Phenom Dual-Core or Phenom Triple-Core, simply because of the L3 cache; however, I don't want to find myself banging my head on the wall for not having a quad-core.

While I am an experienced computer builder, I've only tinkered around with overclocking, and I'm wondering about the overclock-ability of the Phenoms and the Athlons. AT seems to have gotten great stability from the ATH-IIs and PHE-IIs, but I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as them! I just want something running at about 3GHz, and I'll be happy.

So, AT, what do you suggest?

Thank you!!!

 

[Fox5]

The Triple core! It'll outperform the Athlon II 99% of the time anyway.

 

[LoneNinja]

Sounds to me like you don't really need 4 cores for anything, so personally I would go with the X3.

 

[nyker96]

if you like me runs a ton of apps at a time on a 64bit system then a x4 620 OCed to about 3,5ghz should be fairly nice to have over x2 or x3s. it while not so good for games is still passable at about the level of a dual core with cache especially when OCed. oh if you going win7 it's optimized for quad and up will get a boost there.

 

[deimos3428]

Originally posted by: teclis1023
I'm neither a power-gamer nor a power-user; however, I do enjoy games from time to time.

The X3 710 is a perfect fit for this type of computing.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Against the grain: Go for the quad and put your worries behind you.

Reasoning: For well-threaded applications the 620 is going to be faster than the 710 or 545. For applications that can only make use of single or dual cores, the 620 should be fast enough to satisfy your needs. Even for gaming, where most games aren't threaded past two cores, the 620 will provide the same gameplay experience and the same framerates when paired with your 4870. The 620 should also be a bit faster in Photoshop, and I'm assuming in archiving as well. If you like to multitask, or do many things at once, then the quad would be handy.

But if that doesn't interest you, then go with what everyone else said: The triple core 710.

 

[teclis1023]

Hi everyone - I want to thank you for your responses! Most of you seem to say the 710 is the better fit, although Cuside says that I should go for the Athlon. I suppose I'm torn!

How much will the lack of L3 cache affect my performance? Let's assume that I can overclock both of them to approximately 3.5GHz (which, according to AT, Tom's and TweakTown, is quite easy). If they're both at 3.5GHz, then should I favor L3 cache or a fourth core?

I really appreciate all of your expertise.

Also, I know it's really silly, but I have this weird preference toward Phenom II, just because it 'seems' like a higher end chip. Am I being stupid?

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: teclis1023
Hi everyone - I want to thank you for your responses! Most of you seem to say the 710 is the better fit, although Cuside says that I should go for the Athlon. I suppose I'm torn!

How much will the lack of L3 cache affect my performance? Let's assume that I can overclock both of them to approximately 3.5GHz (which, according to AT, Tom's and TweakTown, is quite easy). If they're both at 3.5GHz, then should I favor L3 cache or a fourth core?

I really appreciate all of your expertise.

Also, I know it's really silly, but I have this weird preference toward Phenom II, just because it 'seems' like a higher end chip. Am I being stupid?

The Athlon II will perform 10-20% worse, depending on the app.
Additionally, without L3 cache it won't scale as well in multithreaded programs that share a lot of data between threads. IE, in anything but the most trivial multithreaded programs (maybe some video encoding apps), the Athlon II will experience significantly worse scaling (say, 70%-80% of what a cpu with L3 cache would), meaning the X3 Phenom II will beat it, even in a program that takes advantage of quad cores.

Not to mention that with only 512KB L2 cache per core, the Athlon II is going to be severely cache starved if a massively multithreaded (>4 heavy threads) software environment ever comes about. That's probably not a worry for the near future though, unless you wanna turn your computer into a server or something.

Edit: At the moment, the Athlon II X4 seems to win most quad core enabled benchmarks (photo, video, and 3d rendering), but the Phenom II X3 has a huge advantage, even in games that live for quad cores like Farcry 2 and GTA4. Still, I'd argue that the situation will only become more favorable for the X3 Phenom II over time, all the apps that could be easily parallelized have already been so, the ones that require a large shared cache to perform well will be next. In a few years from now, I'd bet on the Athlon II being more likely to be crippled from the lack of a large shared cache than the Phenom II X3 being crippled from lacking a core.

 

[teclis1023]

So, from what I'm reading from about 1/2 a dozen reviews, the A2 620 seems to perform better multi-threaded tasks (big surprise). I wish I could see a comparison of these two overclocked at 3.5GHz each, and see which one handles itself better.

Fox and Cuside make really good points about the L3, and I'm leaning that way; however, I'm still tempted to go against better judgment and get the X4, simply because it seems to really outperform the X3 on most benchmarks...

I really appreciate it, guys!

 

[teclis1023]

Oh, just for the record, this is what I'm looking at for a system:

Phenom II X3 710
4GB DDR3-1333 GEIL
MSI 785GM-E65 Motherboard
Radeon 4870 512MB

I'd LOVE to run this all from an SSD, but I won't have that privilege at the beginning. I plan to run Win7 Professional 64-bit.

I don't know if this changes anything.

 

[deputc26]

Looks good man, Personally I'd say the X3 and X4 are equals, with the L3 roughly equalling the extra core, the X3 will game better, the X4 will crunch numbers better, it's that simple.

 

[Jovec]

1) Here is an AT Bench compare of the 710 vs 620 for a direct comparison of more cache vs more cores at the same clock speed.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench...3.44.45.46.47.48.49.50

2) Here is an AT Bench compare of the 630 vs 920 for a direct L3 cache comparison with identical clock speeds and cores:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench...3.44.45.46.47.48.49.50

3) Consider downgrading to DDR2 memory and Mobo which will allow you to put a few more dollars ($40-$50) into your CPU at the cost of socket longevity. At the very least you could use that savings to get a 720 BE and aftermarket HSF for a good OC, plus with a mobo with a 750 or 710 southbridge you might be able to unlock the 4th core. Any DDR3 advantage is easily overcome by more CPU.

4) If you like the 710, spend the extra $10 on the 720 regardless of what else you do.

 

[teclis1023]

Hi Jovec and Deput,

Thanks for your responses! I continue to learn and learn from this community

Jovec, they money's not a huge factor for me. The reason I went with the upgraded motherboard is as follows: (A) 4GB DDR2 and 4GB DDR3 are identical in price, weirdly. (B) The upgraded motherboard seems the support OCing a bit better. (C) The upgraded motherboard has more features, which will be a big deal.

If the 920 is worth the $10, then I'll spring for it, no doubt! The only question is, why would it be worth it if I'm going to overclock?

 

[crisium]

X3. Gives you a performance edge over Quad Core for all the dual-optimized games out there, and gives you better results than a Dual Core in triple or quad optimized games. For general multitasking the X4 will be a bit faster, but at what point is a CPU "good enough" for Photoshop? At an X2 3800 I'd argue. Basically what I'm saying is that the X3 is superior 99% of the time in games and in the things it's slower in (outside of games) it provides good enough performance. I guess you could argue the inverse too (620 is good enough for gaming) but I would disagree because L3 cache is very important for games and you wouldn't be getting the most out of your 4870 without it.

Edit:Tom is your friend when it comes to L3:

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...lon-l3-cache,2416.html

Of course this is quad vs quad unlike your X3 vs X4 dilemma, but good to know anyway.

 

[ther00kie16]

Another vote for X3. And of course, get a mb with SB710 or 750 so you can try unlocking that 4th core if you really need it.

 

[Munky]

I vote for the X3, but spend the little extra for the X3 720. It has an unlocked multi, so it would be easier to OC. Triple-core is the bang/buck sweet spot right now, and if gaming performance is important to you, the L3 cache will be a lot more important than a 4th core.

 

[teclis1023]

It all sounds really great guys. Thank you so much! I'm going for the 720.