Legit Reviews

AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz Triple Core Processor Review

The AMD Athlon II X3 445 is the fastest triple-core processor in the Athlon II series with its overall clock frequency of 3.1GHz. With a street price of $84.99 and a 200MHz boost over its predecessor is the Athlon II X3 445 worth it? Read on to see how it performs in the benchmarks and to see how it handles being overclocked on our AMD 890GX test system.

The AMD Athlon II X3 445 was a processor I was looking forward to working with when the opportunity had presented itself. Not necessarily because it is going to be the fastest processor out there, but it only has three active cores. Whats that mean? Well, that most likely there is a fourth core under the heat spreader. With any luck I would be able to unlock the fourth core, and be able to test the AMD Athlon II X3 445 as a Quad Core as well. Fortunately there was a fourth core on the AMD Athlon II X3 445.

Article Title: AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz Triple Core Processor Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1353/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $89.99 shipped

I look at this low end cpu review, and that low end graphics card review a few days back and I cant help but wonder why there is so many options at the low end priced so very close together. I hate to think I would ever be in the situation where I would not be able to wait a week and save the extra $20, $40, $60, or even $80 to get a much better piece of hardware that would serve me better and last longer.

Maybe if the platform as a whole were cheaper going with an Athlon Chip, and you could get much more savings that way; but as it is now I really have a hard to fathoming why, unless it was an emergency purchase, you would not simply wait a little bit longer and get a much better cpu and really for not that much added cost in a global view.

Moving to AMDs top end quad core from the Athlon Triple core is what $100. Which sounds like a lot if you go percentage, thats like ~115%. But then how much is $80-100 these days, for instance yesterday I spent $60 on Gas, and $20 on Pizza; Pizza is already gone, and gas wont last the month; but a CPU would last years, it effects you every time you boot that PC, every time you use a program, hours upon hours of use. So to not save up that little extra bit, I just dont understand it. Well unless your Computer is dead and you need an immediate replacement.

Sttm wrote:I look at this low end cpu review, and that low end graphics card review a few days back and I cant help but wonder why there is so many options at the low end priced so very close together. I hate to think I would ever be in the situation where I would not be able to wait a week and save the extra $20, $40, $60, or even $80 to get a much better piece of hardware that would serve me better and last longer.

Maybe if the platform as a whole were cheaper going with an Athlon Chip, and you could get much more savings that way; but as it is now I really have a hard to fathoming why, unless it was an emergency purchase, you would not simply wait a little bit longer and get a much better cpu and really for not that much added cost in a global view.

Moving to AMDs top end quad core from the Athlon Triple core is what $100. Which sounds like a lot if you go percentage, thats like ~115%. But then how much is $80-100 these days, for instance yesterday I spent $60 on Gas, and $20 on Pizza; Pizza is already gone, and gas wont last the month; but a CPU would last years, it effects you every time you boot that PC, every time you use a program, hours upon hours of use. So to not save up that little extra bit, I just dont understand it. Well unless your Computer is dead and you need an immediate replacement.

90% of my purchases are frantic 'i need this type of part RIGHT NOW' which is usually just purchase whatever i can afford which commonly is less than $90. take the system i'm on now, i had a C2Q waiting for a board RMA, but it came back as 'User Induced Damage' so i HAD to get a new board, picked up a Gigabyte G31 mATX board for $50 after rush processing since i had no other complete system up (still waiting on the thuban for my AM3 system today) and needed a desktop pronto. without that frantic $47 board purchase i would have been without a system for the past month since the money just wasnt there for a new AM3 cpu

there is a market segment for every price range and you can't deny that, yeah things could be more organized as far as Athlon vs Athlon II vs Phenom vs Phenom II, but they all have purposes whether you see them or not. just like people still buy PCI cards for various reasons. I couldnt be happier with all these options, compare it to gaming, would you only want one maybe two options for the entire FPS genre? no you'd want more options. same principal, some games are at different prices and some games are total garbage, doesnt mean people wont buy the game that's total garbage because its price is low enough to get several games instead of one expensive game you might not even like

Pretty nice review.

When you were unlocking cores, did you bump up the CPU voltage? I had to bump up the voltages on my Phenom II 720 BE to get it stable in Windows at stock speeds.

Yeah I took the vcore up, the clock speeds down and everything else I could think of. It would get to the windows loading screen and freeze. I was hoping it would unlock and be stable, but it wasn't .

I was under the impression only phenom II level chips could unlock as Athlon II's were built natively whatever they are (X2 X3 X4) and the phenoms were the ones with the disabled(but there) cores, could be wrong, have you been able to unlock any of the Athlon IIs you have?

The Athlon II X3 445 uses the Propus die which is the X4 die. It will unlock in the BIOS to a Phenom II X4 B45 but it crashes once you start to load windows.

oh ok, so (for Athlon II's) the X2 is regor which is native dual; X3's are (mostly) Rana which are native X3's; and the native X4 is propus?

skier wrote:oh ok, so (for Athlon II's) the X2 is regor which is native dual; X3's are (mostly) Rana which are native X3's; and the native X4 is propus?

No the Rana core is actually the Propus which is natively a X4

so theres no such thing as a native triple core, okay.

XstollieX wrote:The Athlon II X3 445 uses the Propus die which is the X4 die.

True. But not every Rana was a native Propus. The early X3's were Deneb and they still make it onto shelves with a disabled core and L3 cache.

XstollieX wrote:It will unlock in the BIOS to a Phenom II X4 B45...

True. Unless it wasn't a die with a perfectly good 4th core disabled for the sole purpose of meeting X3 quotas, in which case the second half of your sentence would likely be the result.

XstollieX wrote:...but it crashes once you start to load windows.

False. Most of them unlock and their happy owners find themselves with a quad core.

This is precisely why I bought a Rana. I got it for around $65 and promptly unlocked and OC'd it. It's running like a champ and has been since day one.

Some people are luckier and end up with 4 cores and L3 cache. Some people are not as lucky and just end up with exactly what they paid for.