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AMD Athlon II X2 250 [Review]

Roydon Cerejo, Jul 03, 2009 1459 hrs IST

AMD's latest budget processor gives you bang for buck

Expert Rating:

Good performance, low power consumption, AM3 support, competitively priced

Average overclocker

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EXPERT REVIEW

The AMD Athlon X2 7850 is a great processor for those on a budget. It gives you an unlocked multiplier for overclocking as well as a Phenom core for better performance as compared with a regular Athlon 6xx series (Brisbane core). While this may seem like the best option at 4K, AMD tempts us again with its latest offering - the Athlon II. Yes, just like the Phenom II's, AMD has retained the Athlon brand name which signifies the budget performance CPU for many.

We have a completely new naming scheme here with the Athlon II X2 250 being the only CPU currently available in the line up. Let's see what lies under the hood of this new Athlon II.

Specifications and Features

Unlike the Phenom II X2, which had two cores disabled, the Athlon die features just two cores it self. In fact, the die goes by a new name Regor, which is derived from the Phenom II core. The Athlon II die is less than half the size measuring just 117.5mm" as compared with a Phenom II die which measures 258mm" . The L2 cache has been toned down a bit to 2MB and the L3 cache has been done away with. Since it is based on socket AM3, it features both a DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller which works with DDR2 as well as DDR3 RAM. The total memory system memory bandwidth remains the same too at 33.1GB/s. One more advantage of the new Athlon II is a lower TDP of 65W as compared with 80W of the Phenom II X2.

Since this will be priced around the 4K bracket, we have AMD's own X2 7850 BE against it as well as the Intel E5200. Going a little higher, we have the Phenom II X2 550 and the E7400 from Intel. Now, we don't have a full line up of Intel CPU's to test out so we'll have to do with the E8400. Without further ado let's see if the Athlon II X2 is worth the wait.

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