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Yesterday we published our review of the new Phenom II X4 810 - it is a great little chip, and you can read that review here - but today it is time to follow up with our review of the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition.

AMD is squarely targeting the enthusiast crowd with this chip: the unlocked multiplier, along with the stated intent to price it similarly to the Core 2 Duo E8400, both make it clear that they are gunning for the overclocking crowd.

Although I am definitely part of the overclocking crowd, the analysis of the benchmark result charts in this review will concentrate on the stock performance of the Phenom II X3 720 BE versus the stock performance of the Core 2 Duo E8400.

AMD is betting that having a third core, the Phenom II X720 Black Edition will be able to overcome the advantage of a 200MHz higher clock rate, and the 50% greater integer instruction issue rate.

Let's quickly recap the newly announced parts from yesterday:

Today, AMD is introducing new, more value oriented, Phenom II processors:

• $175 AMD Phenom™ II X4 810 @ 2.6GHz with 4MB of L3 cache
• $145 AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition @ 2.8GHz with 6MB of L3 cache
• $125 AMD Phenom™ II X3 710 @ 2.6GHz with 6MB of L3 cache
• $n/a  AMD Phenom™ II X4 910 @ 2.6GHz with 6MB of L3 cache (Available in tray only)
• $n/a  AMD Phenom™ II X4 805 @ 2.5GHz with 4MB of L3 cache (Available in tray only)

The current prices are:

• $145 Phenom II X3 720 (AMD announced price)
• $165 Core 2 Duo E8400 (at NewEgg)

The Phenom II X3 720 starts the contest with a potential $20 price advantage on the processor alone - and more if you use a P45 motherboard and DDR3 memory for the testing (like we will). So how will the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition stack up?