The Phenom X3 line of processors from AMD made itself known as the first collection of triple-core CPUs.

The manufacturer, however, has indicated that they intend them to be direct competitors to its rival Intel's Core 2 Duo range of dual-core processors.

This means that the 2.3 GHz X3 8650 can be compared with the Core 2 Duo E7200, but deciding a clear winner is tricky.


While the Intel chip had broadly better results in this case, there are a number of cases in which AMD's CPU does better.

Let's take the case of our file compression test, for instance, where we time different operations using WinRAR.

This X3 processor successfully compressed our test folder into a single archive in 3 minutes 28 seconds, while the Core 2 Duo (C2D) took 3 minutes 54 seconds.

When it came to ripping an audio CD to MP3, though, the results were the other way round: the X3 took 2 minutes 51 seconds while the C2D only needed 1 minute 52 seconds to complete the same task.

Intel also has the upper hand in this particular comparison when it comes to games: its processor produced a framerate of 32 fps while playing World in Conflict, compared to the X3 8650's 28 fps.

The picture is a complex one, and the best thing to do is check out the detailed results in our Product Face-Off to see which applications the X3s struggle with and where they perform more adequately.

In terms of our physical measurements of the X3 processors, we were rather disappointed by how much power they used: this one caused our test PC to ramp consumption up to 206 W while idle and 282 W at full speed.

For comparison, the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 rates at 161 W and 222 W respectively for these two measures, and the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 155 W and 195 W respectively.