There has been lots of discussion around our recently launched triple-core AMD Phenom™ X3 processor lineup, and a number of online resellers already offer the processors. Consumer systems from Hewlett-Packard and Gateway that use the AMD Phenom™ X3 processor are on the market today. These desktops are available at Best Buy for as little as US$550.

Seems the interesting debate is this: when is three better than two or four? And by better, I do of course mean more useful.

For entertainment, we are focused on helping consumers enjoy a better experience with high definition video and gaming. Today’s popular applications for manipulating video (like Ahead Software’s Nero and Windows Media Encoder) can perform over 30% faster with AMD’s triple cores when resizing video for playback on a portable video player or compressing a high definition video for playback on a DVD.  That’s compared to our AMD Athlon™ X2 dual cores.

AMD Phenom X4 processors deliver over 20% additional performance on these same applications, by the way.  These are common tasks with common formats like H.264 and MPEG 2 that anyone who has a lot of high quality video would benefit from. If you combine those benefits with our 780G chipsets with integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 graphics with ATI Hybrid CrossFireX™ technology under the Windows Vista OS  – you get perfect platform for accelerated HD video playback and 3D performance. Our 780G-based  triple core platforms can score an unprecedented 1500 on 3D Mark 06, outperforming competing platforms by more than 250%.

For the more ‘prosumer’ types, we are focused on delivering performance for demanding video and multi-media applications, which tend to be multi-threaded and multi-core ready. Industry standard 3D rendering applications like PovRay and video rendering plug-ins like MainConcept encoder both deliver over 30% more performance with our triple core.  And a further 20% performance increase is realized by moving to AMD Phenom X4. Combined with our ATI Radeon™ HD and Fire™ graphics adapters, professionals and prosumers can create original video extremely fast in native high definition formats.

For Gaming, AMD Phenom X3 processors are winning a lot of shootouts with today’s multi-threaded games. The Microsoft Xbox video game system is a triple core platform and a lot of development is shared between PCs and today’s top consoles. So naturally, I think we are going to see the most demanding games embracing multi-core processors and state-of-the-art graphics technology.

With Phenom X3 we are seeing EA’s Crysis with scores over 25% higher, Unreal Tournament 3 over 30%, and Quake 4 over 70% than our dual core designs. And the vast majority of uplift in these games is between dual and triple core vs. triple to quad core.

Noticing a trend? AMD Phenom X3 bridges the gap between dual core and quad core technologies, takes advantage of PC/console joint game development, and breaks through the barrier of high definition entertainment by speeding the manipulation of high definition content. 

In my opinion, today’s consumers are going to have performance to spare for everyday productivity applications - adding a lot of redundant performance for these applications doesn’t improve the utility of contemporary PCs.  AMD Phenom X3 does not provide the best performance for single threaded productivity applications – but I don’t think this is where our customers are feeling pain. AMD Phenom X3 is all about performance for demanding uses and is ready for a highly visual, high definition future.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD's positions, strategies or opinions.