AMD Athlon II X3 425 2.70 GHz

[Omega]

AMD's Athlon II X3 425 offers all the features of the of the more expensive Quad Cores, and you can potentially unlock the fourth core. Being priced at only $79 it creates tough competition for Intel in this segment, but also for AMD who has a number of other processors in this market. Even though it lacks the L3 cache it still offers decent performance, especially considering its price.

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[DaC]

Nice review! You really made my mind going back to AMD with your sempron 140 review.
I found a little typo on the end of the article: on conclusion
".... are the weakest points of the Athlon II X4 425. With stock...."

 

[WarEagleAU]

AMD is hitting on all cylinders and flooding the market. Good and bad. Bad because they are having prices hit close to home in all sectors from Quads to Tris to Duals. Good because this influx of cash should help them to get a better hold on the high end sector and maybe help them release the 32nm procs before 2011.

 

[DaC]

...release the 32nm procs before 2011.

And hopefully it will be socket AM3 compatible...

 

[angelkiller]

Good review.

AMD really seems to be kicking some ass on the low end. Quad core for $100, Tri core for $80 Dual for $60. Pretty much undercuts all of Intel's Wolfdale stuff.

I'm a bit concerned about AMD having too many models. There's the Athlon X2, X3, X4, and then Phenom X2, X3, X4. That's not so bad, but what makes it confusing is when they overlap. If I have $100, do I get a dual core with L3, a Quad core with no L3, or a Tri Core with L3? IMO, the Athlon X4 should cost the same as a Phenom X3 and there should not be a Phenom X2. Then that leads to the question of how much the L3 actually helps. I noticed that the X 435 pretty much performes the same as a X3 710. Yes there are a couple of exceptions, but in general, it seems to me that the $$ spent jumping to a Phenom version isn't worth it. The Athlon version with no L3 cache seems to get 90% of the performance for less than 90% of the price. But in the big picture, we're only talking a few dollars here... AMD's prices only range about $100 from top to bottom. (only talking low end stuff here)

I don't mean to sound Anti-AMD. I think they have completely dominated the under-$150 market.

 

[a_ump]

just a quick question. Are all the chips that AMD uses, from Phenom II x2-x4, athlong II x2-x4, using the same core with just defects or disabled parts, besides the Phenom II x4? If so then i think it explains really well why they are and can flood the market. All their chips are getting used except for the utmost faulty die's. great for them and great for us or at least the tech savy us that know the difference between all the diff chips AMD has out.

 

[angelkiller]

No. Phenom chips use one die ,Deneb, which is a quad core chip and all other Phenom models are derived from this. Athlon chips use a different die, Propus, which is quad core with no L3 cache. The Athlon X4 and X3's are based on this. Finally the Athlon II chips and Sempron stuff uses a dual Core die, called Regor.

 

[a_ump]

so same core for all athlons then a different one for all Phenom II's? with just disabled parts and whatnot? still very efficient way for AMD to make use of its resources and die's. I'd wonder why Intel doesn't do the same but then they're the rich kids of the hardware industry.

 

[angelkiller]

Well, they do. They have the Wolfdale Core. E8x00 series. Disable some cache, you get the E7x00 series. Disable more cache, you get the E5x00 series.

Intel has 3 major cores: Wolfdale, Lynnfield, Bloomfield. Nearly all of their chips are some deritive of these three cores. (I may be forgetting some)

 

[a_ump]

true, i'd forgotten about the c2d series all being based on wolfdale now.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

dugg

 

[tonyd223]

AMD CPU's

Ok - it's good that AMD are trying their hardest to cross every box - but this doesn't make it any easier for you or I to buy these things - I mean incremental performance differences for just a few pounds difference? I suppose they want the box shifter market back from Intel - it does make a difference if you're buying 1000 CPU's...

Am interested in the new X4 Phenom II 965 with a lower TDP tho - that's a good idea - discontinuing an existing model and replacing with a better performing (have to wait for the tests) and better power consumpting...

Still, I've got a X3 720 which I'm not gonna upgrade until January / Feb - lets see what six cores can do!

 

[rhythmeister]

Do these tri core Athlons use DDR2 800 properly in an AM2+ board? Saw a few going cheap on fleabay but the CPU-world pages say the memory controllers are 667MHz

 

[Omega]

DDR2 up to 1066 MHz on AM2+/AM3 boards is supported, so the answer you need is yes.

 

[rhythmeister]

This says otherwise though

 

[rhythmeister]

Same for the 435!

 

[Omega]

667 MHz is the actual frequency, but since today's memory is double data rade (DDR) it reads and writes data in one clock, so the effective clock is doubled to 1333 MHz.

So the number you see there is actually for max. DDR3 memory clock support. For 1066 MHz DDR2 you would see 533 MHz support there

 

[rhythmeister]

667 MHz is the actual frequency, but since today's memory is double data rade (DDR) it reads and writes data in one clock, so the effective clock is doubled to 1333 MHz.

So the number you see there is actually for max. DDR3 memory clock support. For 1066 MHz DDR2 you would see 533 MHz support there

Get ya now; I assumed 667MHz MEANT 667 as in DDR2 667 I didn't know recent Athlons/ Phenoms could do 1333MHz but I guess that's AM3 then

 

[caamsa]

I got the X3 425 and was able to unlock the 4th core and the L3 cache, but I was lucky. Not bad for a $76.00 chip. It seemed to work ok but when I went to turn the computer on one day I had to hit the power button a couple times to get it to boot. Not sure what that was all about so I set it back to stock. Anyway I am happy with my cpu and if you look at the benchmarks it is not all that great overclocked anyway so I might as well keep it stock. My MB is a ASRock A780GXH/128M and that allowed me to recycle my DDR2 memory so at 148.00 for the CPU and MB I would say that is a good cheap upgrade. ;-)

 

[savatage]

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