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I just unlocked my Athlon II X3 450's 4th core and now CPU-Z shows it as a Phenom II X4 B450 3.2ghz .....

What is this processor's L3 cache (shows blank in cpu-z but a phenom usually has L3 cache).

Anyway just wondering what I have under the hood rite now. I can't find any reviews on this so I assume it's a hybrid. Where would the performance of this processor lie?

matdem1 wrote:

I just unlocked my Athlon II X3 450's 4th core and now CPU-Z shows it as a Phenom II X4 B450 3.2ghz .....

What is this processor's L3 cache (shows blank in cpu-z but a phenom usually has L3 cache).

It doesn't have any. It's just an Propus Athlon II X4 with one core disabled by default. Unlocking the core doesn't change the cache situation.

3.2ghz, 4 cores, no L3? Comparable would probably be the new "Phenom II" X4 840, which is a Athlon II X4 given upscale naming.

I think you're rite.

Hardware canucks just did a good review of the Phenom II X4 840 here:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... eview.html

I wonder if I'd be better off disabling the 4th core in order to get a higher overclock on the original 3 cores? What do you think.. Gaming is my concern though I know a lack of L3 will handicap this processor.. I'm hoping to overcome that with a 3.7 or higher overclock on air.

The four cores went to 3.44 but the system began hanging. Do you think dropping back to 3 is a better idea for a higher overlock? THOUGHTS!

Some games like to have more CPUs. Plus, what's 300MHz in the grand scheme of things?

There a very few games out there that can utilize more than three cores. Live Civ V, and Dragon Age and maybe one or two others. If you're not playing one of the games that loves more cores, then you're better off with three faster cores than four slower, even if it's only another 300 MHz (but remember, that's 300 MHz per core).

flip-mode wrote:

There a very few games out there that can utilize more than three cores. Live Civ V, and Dragon Age and maybe one or two others. If you're not playing one of the games that loves more cores, then you're better off with three faster cores than four slower, even if it's only another 300 MHz (but remember, that's 300 MHz per core).

There are more games...
NFS hot pursuit, COD black ops and the rest are here ... http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7942 ... /Practice/

Jigar wrote:

There are more games...
NFS hot pursuit, COD black ops and the rest are here ... http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7942 ... /Practice/

Well, that's sort of informative. Too bad they don't show.... ANYTHING in that link other than just saying "up to xx percent!". What settingings were used? What framerate? Am I the only one that doesn't care about a 20% boost over 100 FPS as would be the case with Resident Evil 5? I have that (pathetic, terrible) game and it's the epitome of a console port that supposedly uses DX 10 for something, but it runs completely fluidly with all the settings maxed on a Phenom II @ 3.2 and a Radeon 4850, so any overclock is going to go completely unnoticed regardless of what game settings are used.

The point is that there are probably 5 games out there that will meaningfully make use of more than a few cores. Don't you agree? Even in those hypothetical 5 cases, it's not so clear cut. Take Civ 5. Look here to see Intel's new quad core i3-2400 embarass AMD's fastest hexa core 1100T And the Pentium EE 840 still puts up nearly acceptable frame rates. At realistic game settings, by the time your core count is your bottleneck your entire CPU is going to be the bottleneck and your GPU is going to have to be way outclassing your CPU. There was a time when I was actually truly and meaningfully CPU bottlenecked and it was with an x2-3600 @ 2.4 and a Radeon 4850 playing Crysis. With an Athlon II x3 at 3.7 you'd have to have a Radeon 6950 or better for the CPU to even begin to be a meaningful bottleneck.

Having said all that, it probably doesn't matter Cuz, like I said, if your core count is holding you back then your whole CPU is going to be holding you back, so, 3 cores or 4 cores - pick one and just play some games!

TO FLIP


YUP! I couldn't agree more. Why pay up and overclock for extra FPS that you won't even notice. Anything over 50 fps with min frame rate at 30 is probably not worth paying for.

I looked at the Sandy Bridge reviews and couldn't help but wonder if a GTX460 at 1920 x 1200 or higher would benefit from any of todays top games: The money is still probably much better spent on a faster GPU.