Foreword
At the moment, at the end of 2010, the choice of the "heart" of the computer is very, very difficult. Especially when you consider that you need to spend as little as possible and get as much as possible. With the release of a new line of AMD processors, prices for "old" solutions immediately followed. And, to be honest, the choice is pretty great.
So, which one to buy? With 2,3 or 4 cores. The top four cores are still in price, the two cores are inferior in performance, and therefore AMD decided to resume the line of three cores again, which, as for me, will be the most profitable solution in terms of price and quality. In this review we will consider one of such offers from AMD, namely AMD Athlon II X3 445 3100Mhz / L2-1536Kb / HT AM3 box.
At first sight
Structurally, AMD Athlon II X3 445 is built on the basis of the Propus quad core. AMD blocked one of the cores that did not pass factory testing. Although with some luck, the core can be unlocked and four cores for the price of two. Figure 1 shows the structure of the core.
Specification
As you can see Athlon II X3-445 hasn't changed as compared to its predecessors, X3-435 and X3-440. The difference is that the frequency is increased to 3.1GHz (X3-440 at 3.0GHz). Each of the three cores is equipped with 64KB L1 cache as well as 512KB L2 cache. This gives 384KB of L1 cache and 1.5MB of L2 cache. As you can see, L3 is missing, let's see if this affects performance.
The Athlon-II X3-445 is thus the fastest Athlon flagship among triple-core processors. The X3-445 supports DDR2 up to 1066 MHz and DDR3 up to 1333 MHz, which are AMD standards, although support for DDR3 up to 1600 MHz is quite affordable.
Testing
The most important part of our article.
To begin with, we will conduct testing in TOM'S HARDWARE and evaluate the results
Test configuration
CPU | AMD Athlon II X3 445 3100Mhz / L2-1536Kb / HT AM3 box |
Motherboard | Asus M4A785TD-V EVO Socket AM3 Chipset: AMD 785G, BIOS 0410 |
Memory bars | Mushkin PC3-10700 2 x 2,048MB, 1,070 MHz, CL 7-7-7-16-1T |
Video card | GeForce GTX 480 Reference 700 MHz GPU, 1GB GDDR5 at 924 MHz |
HDD | Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7,200 RPM, 32MB Cache, SATA 3.0 Gb / s |
Power Supply | ePOWER EP-1200E10-T2 1,200W ATX12V, EPS12V |
Testing was carried out in Microsoft Windows 7 x64, DirectX 11. All applications were set to maximum settings.
The processors are arranged in descending order of cost in order to assess price-performance. As you can see, our three-core processor is very good for this very indicator.
The Athlon II X3 445 provides excellent gaming performance while costing under $ 100 and outperforming the dual-core Athlon II X2 260 and Pentium G6950 and nearly catching up with the quad-core Athlon II X4 640. Even at 1920x1080, the minimum frame rate is very close to 30 per second and average frame rate 45 FPS.
As you can see, due to the nature of the game, it was not possible to reveal the real difference in performance.
Price - quality, that's the main indicator and Athlon II X3 445 is the undisputed leader. The performance is on par, the quad-core is bursting at the seams.
Nothing new, everything is the same picture.
The performance is not much worse, four cores in this application have shown their power
We will also run a test for multi-threaded processes and evaluate the results
As you can see, Core i3 and Athlon II X3 445 performed best.
Summing up a certain the total, I can say that the tested processor proved to be just excellent and is a real boon for the budget segment.
Now let's take a benchmark for today and compare the performance of Athlon II X3 445, in comparison with the most powerful processors commercially available.
Let's use the program SiSoftware Sandra
When testing processors in terms of memory bandwidth, the performance of the new processors from AMD is clearly inferior to the Intel line. The Athlon II X3 445 performance is far from the best, but it is similar, again, to the four-core offerings, including the new Athlon II X4 645. The two cores are clearly not competitive.
application SPECviewperf v10
The picture does not change, more than two less than four.
application CINEBENCH R11.5
In synthetics, the results are simply deplorable, which is a pity.
application WinRAR
In an office application, the processor shows good results, which indicates exactly where it will be most in demand.
application Excel 2007
The same result as for the previous application.
application Adobe Photoshop CS4
Yes, it will not be so easy to work with a photo, but it is quite acceptable compared to what is now, according to statistics, used by users.
Conclusion
What can I say if it is a gaming processor or more office one. There is simply no definite answer. As the tests have shown, Athlon II X3 445 is quite capable of fighting in games with complex graphics, especially if a low resolution is used, and in some games and this is not a problem. When it comes to office tasks, this processor is probably one of the best deals in the price policy under $ 100.
For those users who want to purchase this processor for their own needs and at the same time save money, this is undoubtedly a profitable investment.
AMD Athlon II X3 445 3100Mhz / L2-1536Kb / HT AM3 box showed itself from the most advantageous side. AMD employees, of course, can be proud of themselves, and wait for replenishment to their budget, which will not keep you waiting.
And finally, about the main thing, this product can be purchased at a price of $ 83 (664 UAH)
