If we take into account that manufacturer needs to invest into new manufacturing process, its research and development, it is clear that introduction of new micro-architecture is long term plan that demands a lot of financial assets, that in era of economic crisis aren’t always available. Even Intel did not have plans to sell Core i7 in large quantities in first year after launch, but instead planed to wait for cheaper derivates that will make this architecture acceptable for mainstream CPU market. Unfortunately, new mainstream CPUs from Intel won’t have all features of its older high-end brothers, or at least for now. In the mean time, while we are waiting for some fresh news from blue team, AMD has prepared for us hot autumn news, in form of new and very accessible multi-core CPUs. Offensive is obvious: AMD and ATI are launching a bunch of new products, from high-end GPUs up to six-core Opteron CPUs. This time we will focus on CPUs with 3 and 4 cores, but without L3 cache memory.

New AMD quad CPU that arrived in our test lab was made with new lithography mask. “Propus” does not have L3 cache at all, or at least this sample that we got. First thing that we tried was to unlock L3 cache so we can get full quad core Deneb, but after few attempts we concluded that our Athlon II X4 630 does not have L3 cache present under the heat spreader. Overclock margin of this sample is also lower compared to CPUs made out of Phenom II wafers. Thermal characteristics of this small quad are under 95W, which is low for a CPU at 2.8GHz. We expect that AMD will also release low-leakage low-voltage 65W CPU models for HTPC rigs.

Nice surprise when it comes to AMD Athlon II X4 630 were its performance levels. Compared to high-end AMD CPUs, Propus in some cases achieves similar or slightly better performance levels when overclocked. If we compare new Propus with older 65nm Phenom 9950 Black Edition CPU, we can conclude that on default frequencies new CPU left the old one far behind. Because of this CPU, it is predictable that Intel will have to lower price tags on its quad CPUs, and slowly withdraw Core 2 Quad CPUs from the market and replace them with new Core i5 versions.

New Athlon II X3 has code name: Rana. This is 45nm CPU Phenom II derivate, or at least the one that arrived in our test lab. OPN code on heat spreader differs from one that can be seen on Athlon II X4 630. After we noticed that, we were very eager to try unlocking hidden core. Unfortunately, our sample was not in the mood to become a quad core CPU that easy. After we manually set clock calibration and raised voltage on NB at 1.42V, system has reported new CPU: AMD Phenom II B35! Eagerly we started CPU-z and realized that we also unlocked 6MB of L3 cache. L3 cache reached 2.1GHz when we tried to overclock it, so we suspected that we got Deneb core with defect. Instability was obvious in processes of decompressing audio and video material. In case you are watching a movie or listening to mp3, this kind of unlocked CPU can produce error, after which Windows reports it and treats you with a BSOD.

Athlon II X3 without unlocked core operated with no problems even at 3.6GHz with 1.35V, while it was cooled with standard BOX cooler. With Cooler Master Hyper 212 cooler, we managed to reach even 3.8GHz. Difference between Athlon II X3 at default (2.9GHz) and unlocked and overclocked at 3.7GHz is immense.

Performance levels that new Athlon II series is offering are not that much far from performance levels of high-end AMD CPUs. This shouldn’t surprise us, since new CPUs are based on same micro-architecture as old ones. Better performances in this case depend on shear number of core present under the heat spreader and amount on L3 cache memory. Athlon II X4 630 CPUs at 2.8GHz have similar or slightly better performance levels compared to Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 series that operates at 2.66GHz, but AMD has significantly lower price tag.

Compared to Phenom II, Athlon II X4 at same frequency offers for 5-15% lower performance levels depending on what applications and OS you are using. In general, video compression and rendering will work similarly on both CPUs. Gaming performances will be better on Phenom II than on Athlon II CPUs. Since we have done some benchmarking and tests with focus on cache memory, we can conclude that additional 6MB of slow L3 cache does improve performances much more than additional 512KB of fast L2 cache. This allows AMD to differentiate product in lower and higher price range. AMD sets price tags according to its manufacturing expenses, performance levels and price tags of similar Intel CPUs. If you take a look at results, performance differences between different K10 CPUs with different amount of L2 and L3 cache will become clear. It is also clear that differences in price tags are much more important for average users, so overclocking of CPU without L3 cache can result in impressive performance levels.

AMD product lineup is now complete. On one side, we have accessible Regor dual core CPU, in the middle are Propus and Rana CPUs, while on top are positioned CPUs based on Deneb core. In this puzzle only remains one missing piece: Athlon II X2 with 512KB L2 per core that could be positioned in price range of Sempron CPUs.