Athlon II X3 435: AMD's Three-Core, 2.9 GHz, $87 Triple-Threat

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Good review... however:

1. I'm basically ignoring the overclocked Athlon II x3 435 benchmarks unless you're also going to compare overclocked Phenom II x3 720 benchmarks (which I assume can still be simulated using the modified Phenom II x3 965). Still, on stock settings, it's surprising that the Athlon II x3 435 can hold it's own. However, who uses desktop CPU's on stock settings? If you are, and you're reading this, wtf?

2. It's Asus M4A785TD-V EVO, not Asus MA4785TD-V EVO. Switch the "4" and the "A".

3. A lack of L3 cache isn't too much of a big deal, unless you're going to handle multiple operations at the same time (which Tom's Hardware should do more). However, I have a hunch they're releasing these because of the TLB bug AMD had in the past that they couldn't fix in the B2 stepping. To make money, they just disabled the L3 cache (which is how people had to get around the bug in the past, by disabling the L3 cache in the BIOS).
 
Wow, and I thought a few months ago I got a good deal w/paying 140.00 for my X3 720. This thing is nearly half the price! If I were to build a new system today w/the same budget this would be my cpu for sure.
 
[citation][nom]FoShizzleDizzle[/nom]And shouldn't the chart itself reflect that fact anyways, making that statement moot? Maybe I'm missing something here but that comes off as something rather unnecessary to say. It was as though you came into this expecting the 435 to be the best value for performance, then realized based on your methods that you were wrong, so gave an extra nod to the 435 with that statement when the chart itself shows otherwise. The chart itself is SUPPOSED TO account for the affects of an additional core.[/citation]

Not really. Grim is right, I probably could have explained it better.

Firstly, the chart shows application performance per dollar, but the multi-threading benchmark isn't an 'application' per-se so it isn't reflected in that chart.

Also keep in mind that the performance/dollar chart doesn't reflect actual performance. So even though the 435 and 250 are getting similar performance per dollar, the 435 is achieving notably higher results in applications.

For example, let's look at three hypothetical CPUs:
A $50 CPU that gets 18 FPS in games (0.36 FPS/dollar)
A $100 CPU that gets 35 FPS in games (0.35 FPS/dollar)
A $150 CPU that gets 40 FPS in games (0.27 FPS/dollar)

Now, the $50 CPU is achieving a marginally higher performance/dollar ratio than the $100 CPU. Yet the $100 CPU is still a better bet to play games with, right? You can see how a CPU with a marginally worse performance/dollar ratio can be the better buy if the performance justifies it.

The $150 CPU on the other hand is demonstrating poor value compared to both, it does game a little better but at that point the value is so much worse that the $100 CPU is still the best bet.

The point is, a performance/dollar chart is a useful tool, but it's still only a tool -- not the be-all end-all indisputable truth. You still need to decipher it to get the most out of it.
 
Budget CPUs.... meh. CPU's (or rather, the need for better ones) increases pretty slowly compared to, say, a video card. You can use an Pentium 4 (like me!) and won't notice much difference in every day use (any of the tasks you'd be doing if you're looking at a budget system).

Since they progress so slowly, I figure you just buy a processor that's great by todays standards and hold on to the computer longer and upgrade the video card if needed. Instead of making an average computer and buying a new one twice as often, you have a great one (which later becomes average) that might cost twice as much, but it evens out.

Obviously how much you can save up at a single time and how badly you need one factors in, I'm just saying that - if you have the money - it makes more sense to get a powerhouse that lasts a long time than average computers that don't.
 
I think if Intel is going to focus solely on the Core i7/i5 market, that they might lose the battle against AMD very soon!
Reason being that the architecture is quite more expensive than AMD's, and that the majority of the users are just looking for small factor PC's that are able to do basic tasks.
Unless you're into encoding, or heavy gaming, the i-line of Intel is a more expensive line for a desktop pc.

I also wonder when Intel will strike back (to get that majority of buyers in the mass market). Currently their only alternative is the Corei3, for desktop pc's in offices, but even that one is pretty much too powerful for regular office tasks, not to mention a company owning 100PC's will spend a lot of money on electricity,when a slightly slower AMD pc, could cut the cost in half in a 2 to 4 years timespan!
 
[citation][nom]supertrek32[/nom]Budget CPUs.... meh. CPU's (or rather, the need for better ones) increases pretty slowly compared to, say, a video card. You can use an Pentium 4 (like me!) and won't notice much difference in every day use (any of the tasks you'd be doing if you're looking at a budget system).Since they progress so slowly, I figure you just buy a processor that's great by todays standards and hold on to the computer longer and upgrade the video card if needed. Instead of making an average computer and buying a new one twice as often, you have a great one (which later becomes average) that might cost twice as much, but it evens out.Obviously how much you can save up at a single time and how badly you need one factors in, I'm just saying that - if you have the money - it makes more sense to get a powerhouse that lasts a long time than average computers that don't.[/citation]
I would not say so!
Unless you really NEED a powerhouse, I believe it is better to go with budget pc's!
Reason being that budget pc's can do everything what today can offer.
Yes, you can spend 3x the money of a budget PC on a powerful PC that lasts you 2 years longer, but it's better to rather save the money, and purchase a new budget pc in 2 to 3 years, when the old one becomes below average!
The only 2 factors with a budget PC is video card, and Lcache of the CPU.
I believe future PC's will be less aimed towards greater performance (CPU wise), and more aimed towards better power consumption!

I do believe that the PC's of the future will have greater bandwidth overall (RAM, USB, Display, SSD), but CPU wise not very much.
I also think that the future of graphics is in multi core cards, like Larabee, which enables or disables cores to preserve power (eg: a core for vertex shaders, a 2D core, a core that is optimized for Anti Aliasing, etc...)
 
well i have to say AMD is getting very smart, instead of trying to reach the i7 small market they are going for the big pie. and i have to say that im impressed with my athlon II x4 620 @ 3.5ghz, lol i can say for sure that in some cases is faster than an stock 17 920. another thing is i think review sites in general seems to be too partial to intel most of the time, lol unless you work on disney rendering movies a couple of minutes render time diff between a 620 an a i7 is not the big deal you know,lol for 200$ diff i would expect 5x diff not 2 mins, but you still see stuff like "for render performance the i7 is the best option". so dont get cheated even a 99$ quad from AMD can satisfy without almost none visual diff any task you can imagine ppl use, core i7 is only for big enterprises studios or very rich hardcore gamers. my advise save 350$ in the cpu/mobo/mem combo and get a really nice gpu like a gtx275 or a radeon hd 4890. the gpu make a real tangible difference these days and in the future once gpgpu goes mainstream
 


Probably a lot, if you're lucky enough to score a 720 that has a viable 4th core...
 
Would have liked to see the x3 720 OCed next to the x3 435 OCed. It would make the OCed benchmark more meaningful since the 720 is even easier to OC and its more likely that buyers of it will over clock it. In general showing non overclocked black edition AMD processors is silly. Most people buy them because of the unlocked multiplier.
 
On a side note, in general I have to aggree with what seems the majority consensus. With the exception of very demanding tasks (video editing, compiling, heavy file manipulation, etc.) there's hardly a reason to purchase an i5/i7 when you can get a sub $100 processor that will easily handle pretty much any game or modern app you throw at it in a very reasonable manner. It used to be neck and neck between core2 and phenom II for mainstream and value. Now AMD has seriously upped the value/mainstream game. The i5/i7 are cute and all...but your typical user will never see benefit from it beyond bragging rights...not that anyone with common sense will care.
 
[citation][nom]solymnar[/nom]Would have liked to see the x3 720 OCed next to the x3 435 OCed. It would make the OCed benchmark more meaningful since the 720 is even easier to OC and its more likely that buyers of it will over clock it. In general showing non overclocked black edition AMD processors is silly. Most people buy them because of the unlocked multiplier.[/citation]
Yes, I wondered myself why that was missing. On the value charts too, the 720 should also be OC'ed.
Overall, I think this is great. White Box vendors like cheap parts, as do businesses. This could be very good news for AMD.
The low-power lineup looks very interesting too. While it would be "penny wise and pound foolish" to replace a 95W 720BE with a 45W part, if I were building new, I'd definitely pick one up if it then left money in the budget for a SSD, which would probably show a bigger effect on performance.
 
[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]I would not say so!Unless you really NEED a powerhouse, I believe it is better to go with budget pc's!Reason being that budget pc's can do everything what today can offer.Yes, you can spend 3x the money of a budget PC on a powerful PC that lasts you 2 years longer, but it's better to rather save the money, and purchase a new budget pc in 2 to 3 years, when the old one becomes below average!The only 2 factors with a budget PC is video card, and Lcache of the CPU.I believe future PC's will be less aimed towards greater performance (CPU wise), and more aimed towards better power consumption!I do believe that the PC's of the future will have greater bandwidth overall (RAM, USB, Display, SSD), but CPU wise not very much.I also think that the future of graphics is in multi core cards, like Larabee, which enables or disables cores to preserve power (eg: a core for vertex shaders, a 2D core, a core that is optimized for Anti Aliasing, etc...)[/citation]
Consider this:
Back when I got my P4 desktop, P4's were top of the line, P3/2 were mainstream/budget. That was about 6 years ago. CPU-wise, my computer has only started choking over the last year or so. If I had gotten a P3/2, I would have needed a new computer a long time ago, but with my then-highend system, I still don't truly need to upgrade.

Had I upgraded, let's assume it was exactly half of that 6 years (ie 3 years ago). Core 2 had just been released, P4 was your budget cpu now. I'd still need an upgrade at the same time.

Don't get me wrong when I say you should get a powerful CPU, I'm not talking about a $1000 exteme edition. I'm saying up your budget from $600 to $750 and spend the extra $150 on a better CPU. Twice the longevity for 25% more. Throw in 3-4 $100 video card upgrades over the years and you're still saving money.
 
[citation][nom]El_Capitan[/nom]3. A lack of L3 cache isn't too much of a big deal, unless you're going to handle multiple operations at the same time (which Tom's Hardware should do more). However, I have a hunch they're releasing these because of the TLB bug AMD had in the past that they couldn't fix in the B2 stepping. To make money, they just disabled the L3 cache (which is how people had to get around the bug in the past, by disabling the L3 cache in the BIOS).[/citation]
Actually these are probably going to be a mix of Phenom II with disabled cache, and Propus (which doesn't have any L3 cache by design), neither of which is affected by the TLB bug. The bug itself actually was dealt with using the B3 steppings in the older Phenom I line. In the previous patch, the "fix" was to disable page address caching.
 
[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]Yes, I wondered myself why that was missing. On the value charts too, the 720 should also be OC'ed.[/citation]

I would have liked to do this, but remember I had to simulate a 720 by using a 965 and disabling a core while lowering the multiplier - I didn't think it'd be fair to overclock the simualted 720 because it probably has different overhead than an actual 720.

I do have a budget CPU overclocking piece coming up. If I can get a 720 for it, I will, but the existance of the 435 gives me reason to suspect the 720s will be phased out in the near future...
 
[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]I think if Intel is going to focus solely on the Core i7/i5 market, that they might lose the battle against AMD very soon!Reason being that the architecture is quite more expensive than AMD's, and that the majority of the users are just looking for small factor PC's that are able to do basic tasks.Unless you're into encoding, or heavy gaming, the i-line of Intel is a more expensive line for a desktop pc.I also wonder when Intel will strike back (to get that majority of buyers in the mass market). Currently their only alternative is the Corei3, for desktop pc's in offices, but even that one is pretty much too powerful for regular office tasks, not to mention a company owning 100PC's will spend a lot of money on electricity,when a slightly slower AMD pc, could cut the cost in half in a 2 to 4 years timespan![/citation]

You're kind of overlooking the fact Intel could wipe AMD out at the low-end if they ever wanted to. Keep in mind, the Phenom II is just as big as the Core i7 Bloomfield, and only slightly smaller than the Lynnfield. But, with the Lynnfield, you have a simpler chipset, with only one piece and less functionality than on an AMD based one (since PCI-Express is on the processor).

Not that I think Lynnfield matters at all, it won't sell in any numbers and was segmented poorly, but, my point is, Intel could make these parts very cheap if they wanted this market. More to the point, the Core 2 is a lot smaller, and could be sold less expensively than AMD models, if Intel really wanted this market right now.

AMD has two advantages. One is they have cacheless (L3) varieties, that make it considerably smaller than the Bloomfield or Lynnfield, but they fare poorly against the Core 2 in performance. So, Intel could lower the prices and eat them up if this were the only consideration. AMD's big advantage is their IGP, which Intel has no answer to. They'd have to lower their prices for the Core 2 to an unrealistic point to accomodate a discrete card.

With AMD's bad processor design, they are doing the best they can. They were smart to remove the L3 cache, and create products that Intel doesn't have a direct competitor to, which is important when you're struggling with a very poor design. Direct comparisons will always be bad, so, they're doing a great job with what they have. Also, their superb chipsets help a lot too. But, a lot of it is Intel's disinterest in this market. They aren't willing to lower the Core 2 to price points where they can sell more, but get less profit. If they did, none of these processors would seem particularly attractive, since the Core 2 is a lot smaller, and faster, and could be sold very cheap.

Clarksdale might pose a huge threat to AMD. It looks like Intel wants to go mainstream with it, and with all the integration, it could sell very cheaply. On top of this, it has a much more powerful IGP, so AMD better come out with something in that area to counter it. Lynnfield made no difference and is an essentially irrelevant part. But, Clarksdale, using the same platform as it, but targeted for the mass market, could really shake things up. Let's hope AMD has an answer for it. Their processor sucks, but they are away ahead of Intel in graphics processors.
 
[citation][nom]supertrek32[/nom]Consider this:Back when I got my P4 desktop, P4's were top of the line, P3/2 were mainstream/budget. That was about 6 years ago. CPU-wise, my computer has only started choking over the last year or so. If I had gotten a P3/2, I would have needed a new computer a long time ago, but with my then-highend system, I still don't truly need to upgrade.Had I upgraded, let's assume it was exactly half of that 6 years (ie 3 years ago). Core 2 had just been released, P4 was your budget cpu now. I'd still need an upgrade at the same time.Don't get me wrong when I say you should get a powerful CPU, I'm not talking about a $1000 exteme edition. I'm saying up your budget from $600 to $750 and spend the extra $150 on a better CPU. Twice the longevity for 25% more. Throw in 3-4 $100 video card upgrades over the years and you're still saving money.[/citation]

Are you tossing you old computers when you're done? I built in 2005 a AMD system with a 3200+ which is about the same as a P4. I upgraded in 2008 to a dual core with a AM2+ mobo, and sold the 3200+ for a good deal which helped offset the price. I have now as of a month or two ago added a x3 720 to it and used the x2 4600+ to rebuild another entire system that was a 3300+ and that upgrade was for free after selling the old parts. By building with budget parts and only upgrading things like hard drive over time and between mobo changes, you can't tell me that this method isn't worth it - especially since I can play crysis on high very easily (at 1680x1050). You stay on the cusp of the high end, while mitigating costs by selling off the stuff that is a bit older but certainly still very usable by the average user.

Besides, better longevity is gotten with a better motherboard that has a longer future. this allows you to use the same everything else while potentially building whole systems with the leftovers like I just did. The AM2+ socket will be able to use all AM3 CPU's and those are what will be around for the foreseeable future. If I wanted to keep the AM2+ motherboard as my main one, when the 6-core AMD CPU's that were announced a bit ago come out, they will STILL be good drop in upgrades. Your P4 will simply have to be replaced completely when you finally decide to jump up to something more recent, and you will have a faster system than me and my ilk, but not for terribly long.
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]I would have liked to do this, but remember I had to simulate a 720 by using a 965 and disabling a core while lowering the multiplier - I didn't think it'd be fair to overclock the simualted 720 because it probably has different overhead than an actual 720.I do have a budget CPU overclocking piece coming up. If I can get a 720 for it, I will, but the existance of the 435 gives me reason to suspect the 720s will be phased out in the near future...[/citation]

Well that's if you were to overclock the CPU by actuallly doing it. By that I mean you could have simply used the same max settings on the athlon II on your simulated x3 720. This way it may not be exactly what a x3 720 could achieve for real, but at least you'd see some swinging blows.
 
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