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In the gaming tests, the extra clock speed of the X3 8750 puts it clearly ahead of the X4 9600 by a small margin.

Final Words

We didn't have enough time to run through our overclocking gamut, but we were able to boost the HT clock to 229MHz on air without any problems. Temperatures were also quite good, hovering in the mid-30C using our Zalman CNPS cooler.

While some of the reviews today have followed AMD's suggestion of pairing the CPU with a 780 series chipset, we think the 790FX gives a good idea of how things can look at the higher end of the scale. We had some difficulties gathering processors for a pure price point comparison, what you'll be hearing a lot about today is there aren't any competing offerings with more than 2 cores at the sub-$200 price point. Actually, we'll discuss this further in a moment, but this is certainly true of the X3 8650 and X3 8450.

There's obvious potential for improvement if you venture in overclocking, and given the price point, that option is certainly attractive. Gaming performance is decent, and the chip is more than enough for basic needs such as office applications and Internet surfing. Where we think the AMD Phenom X3 8750 Triple Core Processor will really shine is in the HTPC space. The BE-series of CPUs we've been using are excellent in that they use little power and hence much cooler running. This allows us to use quieter cooling which is a must when viewing multimedia.

The AMD Phenom X3 8750 uses more power and isn't as cool as the BE, but it is less power consuming than the Phenom X4 processors. Why use these CPUs despite being less power efficient than the BE? Even though the AMD Unified Video Decoder can offload CPU usage in HD playback by putting the work on the graphics processing unit, if you're running multiple tasks during HD playback, the system does struggle if it doesn't have the horse power. We don't do it often, but at times we'll be converting files into DivX for sharing, and the CPU is completely maxed out, causing dropped frames during HD playback. For the test files we used, the X3 8750 had no problems with HD and file conversion.

While the new 50-series X3 chips are set to be at the $200 price-point and under, what does this all really mean in the retail landscape? While it's simple to point out "we'll be cheaper by x amount", what is x in reality? If the X3 were $100 cheaper than some of their competitors, even AMD's own chips, we think the X3 would be very, very compelling. The problem is, at the time of this writing, the . , about $6 cheaper. Now, shipping costs vary and if you do extensive shopping around, you may be able to find an X3 8750 in the $190 range, but the fact of the matter is, AMD's own X4 is really not much more expensive, at least not expensive enough where the price where be prohibitive.

Now, another thing to consider, when comparing against Intel, the pricing between CPUs will be causing your head to spin much like it does for AMD. Looking around though, the motherboard prices are more clear cut. For a quality product, the 780 chipset is consistently $30 to $40 cheaper than the P35. If you choose the boards with onboard graphics, from experience, the 780G boards perform much better than anything Intel has to offer at the moment. When looking at a platform cost differential, the gap widens to $60 to $80 real-world.

We find ourselves thus torn with the choices at hand. As far as gaming is concerned, we like the X3 8750. If pricing through the week levels out closer to AMD's MSRP, it becomes very compelling. At this moment though, I'd personally take the X4 9600 which will be a little more expensive, or maybe even cheaper depending where you shop. From a strict dollar standpoint, and let's just say that you're holding both boxes in your hands, if the difference is $20, I would not hesitate to grab the Quad core X4.

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