Hardware AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU Review

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/06/30/amd-athlon-ii-x2-250-cpu-review/1

The Athlon brand lives on! AMD's latest CPU is a 45nm, 3.0GHz exceptionally budget friendly processor, ready for DDR3 as well as DDR2. Is it a monster overclocker and all round Intel E5200 killer?

 

hmmm
good cpu
+ EPIC overclocking skillz

 

AMD, when are you going to catch up?

I've got 4 of your bloody CPUs.

 

Any idea on when we are going to see the Phenom II X2 550 review show up Bindi?

The L3 should really help it in some scenarios like gaming etc and give it up to another 5-10% or so

 

The Phenom II X2 550 BE review should be making an appearance later this week

 

The 550 is the cpu to buy right now, hopefully bit-tech dont get a dud.
What voltage were you using on the e5200 to get that overclock btw?
Im surprised you didnt gain any more results from putting more voltage through the 250, they can take 1.45v no probs, and was I was hoping to see you get 4, ah well.

 

It's the way the MSI board works - the VDD is recorded as the actual, effective voltage, while the setting for "CPU vCore" is in fact an offset - and while that was set to 1.45-1.5V, the VDD is much lower. It's a bit convoluted and other AM3 boards are different.

It'll boot at 3.9/4GHz ~ish but it wasn't stable.

 

wonder what the newer e6300 does...can it hit 4 ghz easily? how much would the extra bus speed improve its performance over the e5200? tell you what though, if i was starting from scratch, and only wanted a dual core rig, this amd chip would be the way to go. i doubt the 550 will give a 20% improvement in performance to justify the price. if it gives 10% more i'd be amazed. would anyone buy this or the 550 over the 720?

 

I thought it was only the 550 which was a Black Edition with unlocked multipliers???........

Its the reason why i was ignoring the 250....until now.

Is it just as easy to overclock this as the 550 is?.

 

We didn't get one in time for the review However the E7400 we have hits 4.2GHz.

The 550 is £18 more now, and at only ~£72-£76 it's a lot cheaper than the 720 BE at £115ish.

 

Black Editions are not the only ones you can overclock - all AMD CPUs can overclock using the HyperTransport bus, it just means the motherboard choice is more important. The 250s will overclock just as well as the 550 BE with the right mobo under it.

 

Take a look at the Athlon 5050e. I would say that would be a compeditor to the E5200. 5050e is cheaper and only a 45w CPU.

I would say get a 5050e or a Phenom 550 BE depending on who you are and what you are wanting to get out of it.

 

5050e is little different from the 4850e - it's a K8 part still and the difference is considerable. There's no way a 5050 will reach in excess of 3.2GHz, whereas the 250 hits nearly 4 - plus, it has a two generation advantage in execution core.

 

which would be the best 790x/sb750 motherboard? the 790fx's are to pricey for me and i'd never use the onboard gpu.......

 

It's the 790GX with the onboard GPU unless you mean you're discounting the GX series as well.

 

MSI 770-CD45 is good, the Asus Crosshair III Formula is quite cheap and there are a few GXs that are good value

 

Did I just miss it because I'm tired or did you not post any power consumption numbers for the overclocked CPUs?

 

Another plus point for AMD is that this CPU supports Hardware Virtualisation, where as the Intel E5200 does not. Suprised that this isn't mentioned!!

 

Just bought one, first CPU i've bought in many years. Thanks for the review folks

 

Just installed this in my machine, and cup-z says that it is running at 880 ish MHz, occasionally jumping up to 3000ish MHz.
Is this normal for it to auto adjust like that?