AMD Athlon II X4 620 & 630: The First $99 Quad Core CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 16, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SYSMark 2007 Performance
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.
If we only look at the AMD numbers in this chart, there's a pretty nice lineup going on here. The Athlon II X2 250 is slower than the Athlon II X4 620/630, which is slower than the Phenom II X3 730 and all are slower than the Phenom II X4 955. The performance lines up with the pricing, so all is good.
The problem with these cheap quad-cores has always been that you give up a lot in order to get four cores at a low price. The Athlon II X4 appears to break the mold however. The Athlon II X4 620 is priced at $99 and it performs like a $99 CPU. With the exception of the Core 2 Duo E7500 whose high clock speed makes it do unsually well here, the 620 is balanced. You get a reasonably high clock speed and enough cache to be competitive, both at a good price.
You'll see in the individual tests below that performance varies between competitive and underwhelming depending on the task. Anything that can take advantage of four cores does well, otherwise the smaller L2s of the Athlon II X4 hurt it a bit.
In applications that aren't well threaded, you'll see the Athlon II X4 perform less than stellar - but the same is true for all lower end quad-core CPUs. Even the Q8200 is outperformed by the E6300 here. Situations like this are validation for Intel's aggressive turbo modes on Lynnfield.
Any strenuous video encoding however will seriously favor the Athlon II X4. Here we find the $99 620 tying the Core 2 Quad Q8200, and the 630 outperforming it - all at a lower price.
We're back to needing higher clock speeds and larger caches to compete. Being a quad-core processor isn't easy.
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AznBoi36 - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
Typo on page 2."Any strenuous video encoding however will seriously favor the Athlon II X4. Here we find the $99 620 tying the Core 2 Quad Q8200, and the 620 outperforming it - all at a lower price."
Should be 630.
zivnix - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
We look at the TOTAL system power consumption.We look at the TOTAL system performance.
Why do we compare prices of single components?
If you consider TOTAL system cost, we don't look at 60% price difference. It falls to, what, 10%?
And then even CPUs that cost more make sense.
flipmode - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Does not make any sense in my opinion. I already have a case, a PSU, a DVDRW, several hard drives.... I'm not going to be replacing those for no reason. If you want complete systems compared, go look at system builder prices.mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
Anand, could you include a 3GHz AM2 Athlon64 X2 6000+ into the mix
when doing these reviews please? It would be incredibly useful to
know how the Athlon IIs and Phenoms compare to the dual-core
Athlon64s (no need to compare to anything other than the 6000+). My
older Asrock system is a 6000+ and the mbd can take the Phenom2 X4
3.2GHz - but is it worth it? I don't know. Reviews keeping leaving
out the Athlon64 X2, or if they do then it's some pointless low-end
such as a 5600+.
I expect Asrock will add BIOS support for these Athlon II X4s aswell,
so again some comparison numbers would be good to know.
And given earlier articles here and elsewhere, these new CPUs could
also be a very handy upgrade for those trying to get the most out
of AGP systems.
Ian.
PS. To everyone else: don't respond to the trolls. They merely seek
attention. Replying just fans the flames and is exactly what they
want. They know full well the points made back at them are correct,
but that's not why they're posting. Best thing to do is ignore them.
Natfly - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/">http://www.anandtech.com/bench/The scores for the Athlon II X4s are up there.
subbotniki - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
Agree about including the X2 6000+ (great article though Anand).About trolls, AMD and the dragon: Myself is an AMD fan by consumer politital bias. I will always buy and use AMD. Therefore I love to read about a good product they have released. Beeing objective and fair, there are no ways today for an AMD chip to beat the Intel dito.
Hmmm..here everyone knock their heads into the wall - including me: What are we going to compare? Which chip, what cost (incl power eg), plattform etc. Even I hurt my head quite a bit. I've been into hardware for 17 years now (RIP Cyrix!).
The only real straightforward answer I give folk is: what (purpose) are you going to use the chip (computer) to/for? Next question is how big wallet you have and how much you are ready to spend. If money isnt a matter, then we don't need to speculate about whether superman or batman are the best; just buy the most expensive you can get hold of (and if that's not 'nuf - buy some more! In fact it isn't hard to build a system for $200 000. Just a money issue.. ).
I guess most people doesn't have that kind of resources, and the one who has certanly doesn't write comments here. We DO care about prices
and want to have as much as we can have for as little money as possible. Therefore I am convinced that when we messaure chips (consumer stuff) we have to look at the same price. It's not hard to imagine that a $100 000 car is better and fancier then a $10 000. It's also not to hard to understand that most people are going for the $10 000 car.
But if the difference isn't a factor 10 but more like...hmm x 1.2?
Back to basic: how big is your wallet and what are thoose xtra quids leave you with? Purpose again! I KNOW that most people can't tell the difference sitting in front of a 1.7 Ghz Sempron socket A and a core 2 duo 2.2 Ghz. Ever. I'm not talking to you computer freaks, I am talking ordinary stupid user here.
And what I really miss here Anand(You AMD-freak! :-)): Where are the test under Linux enviroment? Take thoose champ for other purposes and you'll come up with some different results..whereas Intel arent fed by MS-platform. Cryptography, MD5 checksum, fileserver etc are test I really miss. I do a lot of video encoding (always in Linux) and would love to see charts from a Linux platform (Yea yea, Phoronix is da shit, but I simply love Anandtech).
I'd better stop now - I know they throw thing @ AMD fans like me..
Peace!
yacoub - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
If they launch one of these at a 45w TDP, it could be great for a small form factor system with a uATX mobo. HTPC...arjunp2085 - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
Hi ,Was searching for Phenom X4 9850 Does not seem to be in the list .. Its not that old In my region where i live that's almost the price range the Phenoms sell for,,,
If possible Please Try adding those charts Does Athlon X4 beat Phenom X4???
blyndy - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
That's a bloody nice deal. So it's only about 70% as powerful as the top of the line processors. It has more than enough processing power for 90% of computer users, and it can handle all the latest games.P.S. "Overclocking suffers a bit as the chips capable of the highest clocks are destined to be Phenom IIs" I can understand that they'll turn a few crippled Phx4s into A2x4s, but why would overclocking suffer on a deneb A2x4 just because some cache has been disabled? Can you please clarify this?
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
Doesn't the part "the chips capable of the highest clocks are destined to be Phenom IIs" answer your PS? They test roughly how fast each chip can run, and bin them accordingly. The faster ones end up as Phenom II, the not so fast ones become Athlon II.