AMD CPU compare

[jgiron]

Question,
In another forum some hinted that the AMD x3 720 is better than the AMD Penom X4 9950.

In some of the articles I read awhile back the x4 9950 performs better than the x3 720. I am comparing apples to applies, no over clocking or unlocking cores. Can anyone tell why this would be the case?

(The only difference that I know is the quad vs the triple and the 2.6 vs 3.0)

 

[MU_Engineer]

Question,
In another forum some hinted that the AMD x3 720 is better than the AMD Penom X4 9950.

In some of the articles I read awhile back the x4 9950 performs better than the x3 720. I am comparing apples to applies, no over clocking or unlocking cores. Can anyone tell why this would be the case?

(The only difference that I know is the quad vs the triple and the 2.6 vs 3.0)

There are a few more differences:

1. The Phenom II X3 720 is actually 2.80 GHz, not 3.00 GHz. The Phenom X4 9950 is 2.6 GHz, though.

2. The X3 720 has 6 MB of L3 cache versus the X4 9950's 2 MB of L3 cache. This makes the X3 720 (as well as all Phenom IIs) faster clock-for-clock in most applications than the X4 9950 and the other original Phenoms.

3. The X3 720 is a 45 nm processor like all Phenom IIs, while the X4 9950 is a 65 nm processor, like all original Phenoms. The 45 nm chips run considerably cooler at the same clock speeds (2.6 GHz Phenom II X4 is 95 watts, 2.6 GHz Phenom X4 is 125 or 140 watts.) The 45 nm units overclock a lot farther too.

4. All Phenom IIs except the X4 920 and X4 940 are Socket AM3 units that can use either DDR2 or DDR3. The original Phenoms are all Socket AM2+ units and can only use DDR2 memory. DDR3-1333 gives a little more performance than DDR2-1066 in the Phenom II units.

That being said, the X4 9950 can be faster in a few situations, namely very multithreaded applications where the extra core of the Phenom X4 9950 is put to good use. Everything else will run faster on the X3 720 as it is faster clock-for-clock as well as having a higher clock speed.

 

[jgiron]

Thank you MU_Engineer, I understand that perfectly. Your response is very helpful.
Now I see why the x3 720 is better than the x4 9950.