Put yourself in AMD's shoes. Things haven't been going to plan. Your crucial quad-core chip arrived late, ran slow and had a nasty little hardware bug. What's more, you're being beaten silly by Intel's Core 2 processors. What do you do? How about a triple-core chip to distract attention from the mess you're in?
That's the cynical take on the launch this week of the Phenom X3, the new triple-core revision of AMD's Barcelona processor architecture. And it's not entirely fair. It might be true that the X3 would not have happened if the Phenom project as a whole wasn't floundering. But it's still a smart move by AMD and presents punters with an intriguing new alternative.
Processor pitch
For starters, it gives AMD a unique sales pitch and a product that neatly transcends the direct comparisons that have been so unflattering for the initial quad-core Phenom X4 models. Indeed, it's extremely unlikely that Intel will copy it.
Intel's quad-core processors are actually composed of a pair of dual-core dies sandwiched into a single package. Creating a triple-core model would therefore require some fairly hideous hackery. But even if it didn't, such is Intel's crushing dominance, it's doubtful it would bother. Let AMD have a monopoly on triple-core products. See if Intel cares.
More to the point, by pricing the new X3 range to take on dual-core Intel Core 2s, AMD probably reckons it can offset Phenom's core-for-core performance disadvantage. If the X3 delivers more bang for your buck, what do you care whether the whole triple-core thing is a bit of a gimmick? What really matters is the performance it pumps out, not how it's achieved.
Bugged out
So, is the new Phenom X3 actually a chip we can actually recommend? Certainly we're pleasantly surprised to find that retail examples of AMD's triple-ganger sport the all important '50' suffix. That indicates they're based on the latest B3 spin of the Phenom architecture and hence free from the infamous TLB bug. As we've reported earlier, the BIOS work around AMD implemented to patch the bug typically sapped performance to the tune of 10% and sometimes as much as 30%.
