of the main differences between these sockets is the version of We tested BioShock by manually playing through a specific point in the game five times while recording frame rates using the FRAPS utility. However, we’ve included this particular VirtualDub/DivX test largely as a showcase for SSE4’s potential. As you concluded, these would only have made sense if there was more breathing space between the top and bottom of AMD’s price range. This test puts multiple cores to good use, and as a result, the Phenom X3 8450 delivers higher frame rates than the Core 2 Duo E7200. Conroe and Penyrn-based C2D chips are vasty superior to their K10 counterparts at SSEx. Intel’s 45nm dual-cores, the closest performance and price competition, use substantially less power. Kinda slick when you think about it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to use more than four threads, even on an eight-core system. But this can only be done by reading the small labels besides each bar, which is difficult. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. Valve uses VRAD to precompute lighting that goes into games like Half-Life 2. When looking at graphs such as on pages 5-8, I find myself trying to separate dual-cores from quad-cores (and triple-cores in this case). The universe is falling apart! Our MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard apparently had no facility for adjusting the north bridge multiplier or for locking down the PCI Express clock. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them. If you want to overclock a Phenom, you’re better off getting the Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition, which has an unlocked multiplier. I’d encourage you to visit our distributed computing forum and consider joining our team if you haven’t already joined one. My guess would be they just got the CPU count and, if it was more than one, just shifted it one bit to the right (divided by two). For this test, I asked Windows Media Encoder to transcode a 153MB 1080-line widescreen video into a 720-line WMV using its built-in DVD/Hardware profile. More than once, we saw the Core 2 Duo E8400 outperform the Phenom X3 8750 in intelligently multithreaded applications. Almost all of the systems had their power management features (such as SpeedStep and Cool’n’Quiet) enabled during these tests via Windows Vista’s “Balanced” power options profile. » Review Lenovo IdeaPad Z565-4311 Notebook - Review» Lenovo IdeaPad Z565-4311 - External Review, » Mobile CPU Comparison Comparison of all mobile CPU series, » Mobile Processors - BenchmarklistBenchmarklist of all known CPUs that are used in laptops (desktop and laptop CPUs), Top 10 LaptopsMultimedia, Budget Multimedia, Gaming, Budget Gaming, Lightweight Gaming, Business, Budget Office, Workstation, Subnotebooks, Ultrabooks, Chromebooks, under 300 USD/Euros, under 500 USD/Euros, 1.000 USD/Euros, Top 10 SmartphonesSmartphones, Phablets, ≤5-inch, Camera SmartphonesNotebookcheck's Top 10 Smartphones under 160 Euros. We’ll kick off our gaming tests with some Team Fortress 2, Valve’s class-driven multiplayer shooter based on the Source game engine. It might be innovative, if the average user was running applications from multiple OS’s at the same time. what about SSE4.1? The Phenom 9500 easily produces more points per day, in total, than the X3 8750, and the 8750 in turn outproduces the Core 2 Duo E8400. Compared to a modern Core i3-330M, the N830 stays nearly always clearly below (except in the CB11.5). The X3 8750 made it up to 2.8GHz (well, OK, 2.796GHz, if you want to be exact) on a 233MHz HT clock without much fuss, at stock voltage, but then it hit a wall. I’d really like to see some tests run on multiple instances of virtualized XP or Vista. » Asus K52Dr - External Review, Asus K72DR-A1 (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, 17.3") Even less common is the case of three CPUs. Each processor runs threads individually, so it’s perfectly fine to have “weird” numbers of cores. Good things often come in powers of two, especially in computers. HyperTransport technology, AMD64 technology, integrated memory controller, Enhanced Virus Protection, AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology, AMD CoolCore Technology, AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology, © CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. SSE4a? This was an interesting decision on AMD’s part. . In order to diminish the effect of outliers, we’ve reported the median of the five low frame rates we encountered.