Hardware AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU Review

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/10/26/amd-athlon-ii-x4-620-cpu-review/1

One of AMD's cheapest quad cores to date is a further evolution of the Athlon brand: the Athlon II X4 630 and 620. Without cache we check to see how it performs against Intel alternatives for the same money, if cache makes a difference and if it overclocks better.

 

Got to agree with the conclusion.......the 550 is shaping up to be the best CPU i have ever bought, even if your unlucky and get one that doesnt unlock any extra cores, running at stock speed, it has chewed up anything ive thrown at it...and given a decent overclock there is room to spare for the future.

Of course its nice to shown off your e-peen with synthetic 3/4 core benchmarks, like Cinebench and the rest, but in 'real world' day to day tasks and gaming the 550 is better than a crippled cut down quad.

 

wow it's really crap, such a shame =\

 

i am totally puzzled by the high power output...
i guess i'll keep overclocking my e8500 (now at 4.5) for a while, until i reach the absolute limit...

 

I would have liked to see the X4 620 up against the Q8200 which is its nearest Intel competitor. From the many reviews on the Internet, it has similar performance but much cheaper, up to 40% less with some retailers. I think this is a huge win for AMD.

Despite the negative conclusion, I would still consider the X4 620 if I wanted a budget quad-core chip (for multithreaded tasks).

 

I know, but we don't have one Also the Q8200 is £105: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148933 so not a direct competitor imo. If you were spending £105, you'd but a 720 Black Edition for £90 or a 630 for £95. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176579 but the 630 versus 620 is extremely bad value for 200MHz. The next jump is £125 for a Phenom II X4 945.

A "big win for AMD" in the **** quad core stakes is like being a winner of the three legged race contest. Our conclusion is still to buy a dual or triple core.

 

It seemed to be holding it's own until the multitasking tests. A bit of a shame really given this is one of the main reasons for getting a multicore processor!

Still, I guess this is one for the OEMs which will now be able to flog cheap quad core computers to the masses. Not great for enthusiasts, but good for AMDs bottom line!

 

for the Price it is good still thought

Q8xxx does not support VT (all AMD 64 AM2 cpus do, some semprons do as well) its Pot luck as to witch CPU has VT or not on intel side, as it does not state it on the box i think

not sure about temps but i been passing on Phonems for quite some time now they just run to hot under full load (requires an very big heatsink), the Athlon II X2 and X4 just do not warm up a lot the suppled heatsink worked fine for me (46c now but i am using an blue orb 2 with Folding@home SMP the score i am getting thought is not very good only 800-1000 PPD (1760 ponter) but the CPU is still clocked at default 2.6ghz i guess i could clock it up)

i was getting close to switching to intel system until the Athlon II X2 came as currant 65nm or any Phonem or II cpu ran to hot under full load or Idle was warm

 

So the Phenom II 550 is the best choice if you want to play both games and video editing in that price category?


Anyway...

I hate to say it, but you guys suck at overclocking or the provided processor was a lame sheep. I wrote even a excuse for you)

Tweaktown used a Asrock budget mobo and cranked it up to 3.9Ghz



Mainboard ASRock M3A785GXH/128M (Supplied by ASRock)
Memory: 2GB Kingston KHX12800D3T1K3/3GX (Supplied by Kingston)
Hard Disk: Intel X25-M 80GB SSD (Supplied by Kingston)
Graphics Card: GIGABYTE GTX285 1GB (flashed to stock BIOS) (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 (with an extra fan) (Supplied by Cooler Master)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit RTM
Drivers: ATI Catalyst 9.8


Oh wait! You over-clocked with the stock fan? That is a heroic effort than! then I bow to BT

 

I didn't see the cooler you were using. Was it the stock one?

When I tested this CPU, I used a Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer which is a crappy HDT. Of course, it's one of the better HDT's out there, because it has a decent base. And the relative large size of the IHS (compared to Sk775) was an advantage, as all 4 heatpipes made contact. Along with a Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000rpm, I managed a top frequency of 3.9GHz. And that was on a cheap-ass motherboard - Asus M4A785TD-M EVO. This is NOT an overclocker's motherboard, the Vcore was fluctuating wildly.

The max stable frequency in Gaming was 3.83GHz and in syntethics, 3.70GHz.

Still, 3.4GHz is a piece of cake, even on a cheap mobo. And at this frequency, it got very nice results in gaming. Very close to the Phenom II X4 965BE @ stock 3.4GHz. And I tested a lot more games: World In Conflict, Unreal Tournament 3, Street Fighter 4, Resident Evil 5 Benchmark, HAWX, Far Cry 2 and BattleForge.

 

I would ideally like to buy the X2 250 as the only computing task I can't already do is gaming and dual is still pretty strong for most games. However, GTA4 is one of the games I most want to play (after loving San An) and I read a lot of reports that it performs terribly on a dual core machine.

Does anyone have any experience or theory as to how the X3 and X4 Athlons would fair in that game?

From what I gather, they could massively boost performance or have little effect, depending on the actual threading of the game, so can anyone fill me in?

 

I've been pondering a renderfarm for a while, for doing 3D graphics. Nothing huge, but I'd like to have half a dozen machines in it. This might actually be a contender for that, because it's very much a "more cores wins" thing.

Sound reasonable?

 

You'd probably get better bang for buck heading to the cheapest Phenom II X4, but yes it'll be generally fine.

 

Personally, despite bit-techs review(tbh, elsewhere it's not had a bad rep), and due to the upgrade path, this cpu is perfect for me. I'll be running it up near the 3.8ghz mark I'd imagine and it will do all I want to do, with hopefully more grunt for the future than a dual core. I'll have spent as much on a quad core as a good dual core, it'll hopefully see more shelf life due to the core count while I wait for cheaper Intel stuff or am4. I'm cheap.

 

I'd rather buy the Athlon II X3 425 at £38. Any review planned for this chip?

 

I picked out this very CPU (Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition) about 2 months ago for a new build.

Its superb.

 

Big jump going from 2 cores to 3 , an extra 15-20fps, going from mid 20fps to high 30's low 40's in fps.depending on gfx settings and your card, however going from 3 cores to 4 cores will only add another 3-5fps over a triple core.

This was pretty much my experience in all games that are supposed to benefit from quad core CPU's, such as ARMAII.

3 cores is the sweet spot for price/performance given the state of multithreaded games.

 

This coincides with what I've found through searching, cheers!

 

LOL

Are you kidding me Bit-tech?

Everyone else says otherwise...

xbit
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon-ii-x4-630_11.html#sect0

TechPowerUp
http://techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Athlon_II_X4_620/13.html

overclockers
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/athlon2_620/17.htm

tweaktown
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/29...r_review_quad_core_for_mainstream/index9.html

just the final thoughts, you guys can check out the bench's yourselves.

 

forgot one of many:

Legit
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1073/14/