Dropping a core did not exactly hurt the Phenom X3 performance in Unreal Tournament 3 and in fact the fastest tested processor was the dual-core E8400. Our take here is that it is not just the 3GHz clock speed giving the Core 2 Duo its performance advantage.

The Phenom X4 9850 is clocked 200MHz higher than the 9650, yet it is only a fraction faster. Furthermore, the difference in performance between the Q6600 and the E8400 is quite small despite a 600MHz difference in clock frequency. This all suggests that the Core 2 architecture is working far more efficiently in the Unreal engine.

The Crysis medium quality results give the Core 2 Duo E8400 a huge performance lead over the rest of the pack, even the Q6600. Again the Phenom X3 scales on par to its quad-core sibling only forfeiting a few frames per second on average.

Testing Supreme Commander has the Phenom X3 8750 just a few frames per second slower than the Core 2 Quad Q6600, which is very impressive.