AMD known for its fighting underdog spirit recently relaunched the Phenom with the B3-stepping, which we looked at just recently. The B3-stepping has not exactly breathed new life into the Phenom processors, but it has given AMD a chance to regroup and retarget its products, forcedly aiming at cheaper and more affordable Intel processors.

The latest processor series from AMD is a little unusual as it makes use of not one, two, or even four cores, but rather three! That’s right, the new Phenom X3 carries an unusual core configuration, and I guess the question most of you are probably asking yourselves (as we did) is why? The most reasonable explanation is that this still allows AMD to sell Phenom X4 processors with a defective core, minimizing their loss. Second, it gives some leverage for AMD to compete with Intel’s dual-core processors, being able to pull the "additional core" card.

The Phenom X3 family consists of three new processors: the 8450 (2.10GHz), 8650 (2.30GHz) and 8750 (2.40GHz), all of which we are testing here today.


Read the complete review.

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