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| AMD's Phenom X3 8750 - The Power of 3 | |
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(Author: Michael Schuette, April 27, 2008) | |
Final Analysis
Three is an odd number, especially when it comes to CPUs. The precedent set by ATI with the “Pro” series does not really count in this respect because GPUs don’t have to deal with too many third party applications. Everything is running on one or two APIs like OpenGL or DirectX and in so far, there is much less variability between the different applications, particularly when it comes to enabling parallel processing. Moreover, there has been enough variability between the different GPU manufacturers such as Matrox, nVidia, ATI/AMD, Intel, 3DLabs/Creative, SIS and VIA with respect to the internal organization of each core that essentially everything that falls within the API guidelines will work – at least kind of. And if not, then there is a driver update and things are back to where they belong.
As we showed, the world of CPUs abides by different laws. Vista is unacceptable as operating system anyway but it still shows the problematic AMD is facing with Microsoft’s licensing limitations. How many white box builders are out there who just slap systems together and only in the best case install the drivers? How many of those will even be aware of the fact that there is a patch required for the operation of a third core? Granted, the average computer user has become smarter in the last decade but it is still a fact that most users will not even look at the performance monitor to check whether the full number of cores is actually running. What they will experience though is that the computer next door is running faster than the one they just bought and this will be especially true in the case of applications that do take a certain amount of time.
Which brings us to the subject of video recoding. It is not without a certain irony that the two most popular software packages out there, namely DVD-Shrink and Nero have absolutely no clue whatsoever what to do with a triple core and, to be on the safe side, decide to run on one single core only. Explain THAT to somebody who just upgraded from any dual core system. Or was persuaded to move from an Intel platform to AMD ... Good luck on that one!. On a side note, we ran these issues by Leslie Sobon, Director of Product and Brand Management at AMD but have not received any comments or feedback as of yet.
We did not spend more than the better part of 15 min to round up applications that don’t work on triple cores and granted, we only found Nero and DVD Shrink but at the same time, we are fairly certain that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, in contrast to the Vista licensing issue, which reduces the number of cores to only two, these applications only run on a single core and come in DFL by a landslide.
And yes, the top triple core is about $20 cheaper than an entry-level quad core CPU. But is that saving really worth the potential headaches? We don’t think so. The X3 is not a bad processor but as it turns out, it is not supported by an unhealthy number of applications and therefore we recommend to stick with either the X2 series or else go all the way to a quad core solution.
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