AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core

AMD Athlon II X4 Debut: Enter The $99 Quad-Core Our Test Systems & SANDRA

To assess the performance of the new Athlon II X4 processors, we put the two launch models through a gauntlet of benchmarks. Starting with some preliminary testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA benchmark suite, we then move to PC Mark Vantage followed by 3D rendering tests with Cinebench and Kribibench, and finally mp3 encoding with LAME MT. We also put the Athlon II X4's through Crysis' CPU benchmark.

For these tests the Athlon II X4 series was represented by the 2.6GHz 620 and the 2.8GHz 630. They were both equipped with an AMD 785G chipset based motherboard and DDR3 memory. For reference, we pitted them against Intel's G41 chipset equipped with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor. While the Q8200 costs more than both the Athlon II X4 620 and 630, it's Intel's cheapest quad-core processor and should provide for some interesting comparisons. We also threw an AMD Phenom II X3 720 into the mix, considering its competing in the same price range and it will represent AMD's Phenom II's.

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA XII, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran two of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2009 suite (CPU Arithmetic & CPU Multimedia). All of the scores reported below were taken with the hardware running at default speeds and settings.

Overall, all of the various SANDRA CPU benchmarks we ran reported scores in line with expectations. The performance results in both the CPU arithmetic and CPU multi-media tests were similar to the scores an Intel Core 2 Q8200 can achieve. In the rest of the benchmarks, we expand our scope and put the two Athlon II X4 processors up against some real competition.

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