Final Words & Conclusion

The Verdict

Face it, for the money the Athlon II X3 435 processor is a product that will offer a lot of value. Despite the L3 cache being stripped away it on occasion even outperformed the Phenom II X3 720BE processor. That processor hovered is much more easy to overclock since it's an unlocked black edition. Also in more memory intense situations that processor would get my benefit of the doubt.

But pure value speaking, the new Athlon II X3 is not only cheaper .. it also performs really nice, despite the 435 not having any Level 3 cache. The most remarkable thing is it's price; we spotted the Athlon II X3 435 processor  for just 55 EUR / £42. I mean, dang do some math with me -- get yourself the following:

• Athlon II X3 435 processor - 55 EUR
• AMD 785 motherboard - 90 EUR
• 2 GB 1066 MHz memory for 30 EUR
• 500 GB HDD - 40 EUR
• 500 Watt PSU -  50 EUR
• Chassis - 50 EUR
• DVD-RW - 20 EUR

We just build an entire PC or HTPC for 335,- EUR (~400 USD). The motherboard has very decent integrated graphics for all desktop but also HTPC needs, and if you want to game with it, only then you look into a dedicated graphics card. Sure, obviously in the Core i5 / Core i7 era you can't compete with PCs based on processors like these but fact is, you'll receive a lot of bang for buck alright.

As such the Athlon II X3 435 processor as tested today makes a lot of sense. This will be the first tri-core processor under that important 60 USD threshold. Similar to the Athlon X4 series, I was surprised how much performance this X3 processor series offers, I mean really... cutting away all L3 cache inside the processor is pretty radical. But as the results show, the performance definitely remains good enough for pretty much any modern day application. Standard desktop workload, Photoshop, even video editing thanks to the three cores though not horrendously fast -- yet is quite do-able.
Is it all good then? Ehm no, there will be applications being hindered by the lack of the L3 cache and we also noticed our games starting to be hindered by the CPU, which definitely was not something I expected. In the grand scheme of things though the processor offers more than enough horsepower for your games, the framerate will however be a little less with the faster single GPU based graphics cards.

For gamers I still like to recommend Phenom II, and if you need to stay within a lower budget we very much recommend the Phenom II X3 720BE processor as it overclocks really easily, bringing more performance to the table for not a lot of money.

Multimedia wise, for requirements in transcoding or video acceleration, well that's where the processor is golden really. I mean, don't expect it to be a transcoding wonder, no, to the contrary it's decent at best... but the fact that you can utilize three instead of two cores definitely helps out heaps over a dual-core processor in comparison to its price.

Bottom line: For the money the Athlon II X3 435 processor makes a whole lotta sense to us. You can run any modern application really well, your gaming experience is good enough but most of all, the price is just incredibly attractive. If you plan to overclock we do want to point you to our favorite tri-core processor the Phenom II X3 720BE, however if tweaking is not something for you and this processor meets your budget and needs, definitely be on the lookout for it as it is true value for money.

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