AMD Athlon II X3 425 On Linux

[devius]

Anyway, I guess what I mean to say is the i3 better damn well be faster, cause it's much more expensive.

It depends on the application. Athlon II x4 630 is usually faster (sometimes much faster) than core i3-530 on multithreaded applications like video encoding, compressing with 7-zip, 3d rendering, etc. On single-threaded applications the i3 is faster of course.

I think this is the first review I've seen comparing athlon II X3 to phenom II X3. Very interesting! But what about gaming performance? Or is that reserved for the HD4290 review?

[LOLatMS]

It depends on the application. Athlon II x4 630 is usually faster (sometimes much faster) than core i3-530 on multithreaded applications like video encoding, compressing with 7-zip, 3d rendering, etc. On single-threaded applications the i3 is faster of course.

I think this is the first review I've seen comparing athlon II X3 to phenom II X3. Very interesting! But what about gaming performance? Or is that reserved for the HD4290 review?

Of course, the x4 has four physical cores, and should do better in multithreaded scenarios. The onus is on the purchaser to decide which chip best suits his or her use cases.

Gaming does like the cache. There are reviews on other websites, comparing the Phenom II to the Athlon II in gaming (in Windows, naturally. But I would expect the Phenom II to also be faster in Linux.) Of course, at the same clock speed, the Phenom II has an advantage. But you pay more than the performance difference, imo.

When I made my purchase, performance went up linearly with price up to about the Athlon II x3/x4 for my usage, so I stopped there.

[smitty3268]

A lot of the performance boils down to the L3 cache in the Phenom II. Some apps love it because their working set fits nicely into it, but for those that have more random memory access patterns it just adds an extra 20ns (or so, i don't remember the exact number) onto every memory access that ends up missing in the cache.

[ace102]

I have an Phenom II X3 720 (overclocked of course) and have been happy with the performance from day 1. It's scary fast,can you say make --jobs=4?, if you're coming from a single core processor(Athlon64 3200+) like I was. Combine that with a ASUS M4A785-M with ACC 4 cores unlocked and it's very sweet. Just don't use the onboard MB video.

[next9]

Where is Intel CPU in that comparison? Oh wait, this is Phoronix

[sonnet]

useless review,why don't compare with an intel i7,i5 i3 or whatever intel cpu ?The same as when you compare ati card with other ati card.
It seems someone pays you to do that.

[curaga]

Intel has a comparable three-core cpu? Not a fair comparison then.

[sonnet]

Then you would never compare amd vs intel?
Please, be serious, the net is full of reviews of amd x3 cpu compared with intel cpu on windows OS.
Plus intel cpus has hyperthreading which give a considerable boost on multithreading.
In the end of the day, doesn't really matter how many cores or what technology cpus make use of. People want know what would give them more with 100$.
So as long as you compare cpu with comparable prices, it seems quite fair to me.

[curaga]

Well, that was my opinion. I found the article quite interesting in the amount of effect the cache has - very little considering how much of a premium it has.

[Otus]

useless review,why don't compare with an intel i7,i5 i3 or whatever intel cpu ?

Intel has a comparable three-core cpu? Not a fair comparison then.

A fair comparison would be Core 2 Duo E5400 or Pentium E6500. Both cost a few € more than the Athlon here. Motherboards are also available in the same price range, unlike for the newer Intel sockets.