AMDs Athlon II X4 620 is the best value quad core CPU you can buy

by David Bayon | Friday 13 November 2009

AMDs Athlon II X4 620 is the best value quad core CPU you can buy

Rating

Overall:

Nothing incredible in terms of design, but it’s an impressively cheap way to get quad-core in your PC.

Performance:

Features & Design:

Value for money:

Price

Price: $130
> Pricing info

Specs

Socket AM3 CPU; 2.6GHz clock speed; 2MB L2 cache; 4GHz HyperTransport; 45nm manufacturing process; 95W TDP

Away from the hullabaloo surrounding the swanky Intel Core i5s and AMD Phenoms, the chaps behind the latter have been quietly working on a way to keep the old Athlon brand alive and kicking.

We might have expected a new Black Edition perhaps, or a lower power draw and smaller manufacturing process; what we didn't see coming was a quad-core Athlon.

Called the Athlon II X4, it actually shares its architecture with the Phenom II. It's a Socket AM3 part with a 95W TDP (thermal design power), and its four cores each come with 512KB of L2 cache; the difference from the Phenom II is the absence of L3 cache and the smaller 45nm die size.

This makes it more or less a budget Phenom II X4, so we were intrigued to see what effect it had on performance.

There are two parts being released initially: on review here is the X4 620, with a 2.6GHz core clock speed, but there will also be a top-end 2.8GHz X4 630. In an AMD 790FX motherboard with 2GB of 1066GHz DDR3 memory and a Western Digital Caviar SE16 hard disk, the 2.6GHz 620 scored 1.45 in our real-world benchmarks.

It did so while drawing a low 78W when idle and 128W at full pelt, although it's worth pointing out that last month's Core i5 system (web ID: 351385) scored 1.85, drawing just 60W and 124W respectively.

The real headline-grabber is the price. AMD first launched the Athlon II X4 620 with an SRP of $189, and the early retail listings are even lower at $130.

This puts it up against existing quad-core parts: a 2.3GHz Phenom X4 9650 costs the same and scored an identical 1.45 with a 65nm die size, while the cheapest Phenom II X4 will cost you $220. Then there's Intel, whose cheapest Core 2 Quad, the 2.33GHz Q8200, costs around $250 for a slower score of 1.37.

Pair it with one of AMD's mainstream 785G-based motherboards, which were launched last month, and you have a very affordable route to a quad-core system.

True, it isn't exactly a revolutionary leap from its Phenom roots, but if the price keeps going down and the performance keeps rising, the Athlon brand will have plenty of life in it yet.

This Review appeared in the December, 2009 issue of PC & Tech Authority Magazine

See more about: cpu | intel | amd | athlon | ii | x4 | 620 | chip | nvidia | ati | i5 | i7 | quad

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dark41 16 November 2009	While the X4 620 may be the cheapest quad core, the best value depends upon a users needs. If speed is important, the Intel i5 is better value. Comment made about the PC Authority article: AMDs Athlon II X4 620 is the best value quad core CPU you can buy? Nothing incredible in terms of design, but it’s an impressively cheap way to get quad-core in your PC. What do you think? Join the discussion.
Slatts 16 November 2009	dark41 wrote: While the X4 620 may be the cheapest quad core, the best value depends upon a users needs. If speed is important, the Intel i5 is better value. Whereas if 4 cores and lower price is more important, the Intel i5 is worse value. horses for courses. These days, most mainstream software doesn't push modern CPUs too hard anyway.
krazikiwi 17 November 2009	WTF???? No L3 cache???? I don't know about you lot but I'm never gonna buy one of them. But I guess, to its advantage, it has ddr3 to help it out a little. Just try not to do too much video editing on it.
Slatts 17 November 2009	I'm sure it'd run Word and Firefox a treat. And probably thunderbird and your AV program at the same time without missing a beat.
petergaskin 18 November 2009	If you want even an ounce of future proofing, surely the core i5 would be the best choice. Surely, if there is one lesson to be learnt from computing - you must always go further - more power will always win out at the end of the day. I know the amd is cheaper, but is it really cheaper if you have to upgrade to a better solution 12 months down the track?
Slatts 19 November 2009	I'm running an Athlon 64 3200+ with windows XP sp3 on 1.5 Gb of ram. I forget how old it is but I suspect it's at least 4 years old by now peter. It's running office 07 and all my work programs without missing a beat and it can brows the web and get my Email for me. It also runs all of the kids older games. Every 12 months you say? Why?
krazikiwi 19 November 2009	Yeah, but for a hundred bucks less than a Phenom, which would run a lot better? lets not forget that you still need an am3 mobo, and some ddr3. Its really not THAT much cheaper than a phenom at all. Still miles cheaper than an i5, which still needs an LGA1156 mobo. I guess at least the athlon X4 will run on my old am2+ mobo, or my even older am2 mobo, though I doubt the performance boost would be noteable without ddr3... And I don't know many people who change/upgrade machine every twelve months either, Slatts. Mine has been going about 18 months without a slip up. and my sister still runs a four/five year old laptop. Mind you I added ram and a wireless card to it.
blockcentre 19 November 2009	Tom's Hardware and Anantech did some recent testing/benchmarking of the Athlon X4. By their reports its far better value than buying a dual core Intel chip which it's priced up against. It tore up the older C2D and C2Q chips. I think it makes a great value multithreaded desktop for anyone on a budget.
petergaskin 20 November 2009	I run a very old dual hard drive machine at work. Last night I tried to run a conversion from pdf to word - and the computer just sat there staring at me as if I was mad. i will check out the progress this morning! yes I keep my computer for 3+ years and start sufferring from poor performance after the first 2 and a half years. just cant afford to replace any more often. Quite often - at 2 and a half years, upgrading becomes too dear - you might as well spend an extra couple of hundred dollars for a new system. If you are going to save money on the cheap amd quad chip, at least spend extra on more memory. My old work pc - xo/win98, is starting to get the dreaded memory problems, and I even got a not enough memory to run this program yesterday. The machine is probably only 4-5 years old - low powered but essential given what it runs on Windows 98. At least I can run the program from within XP!
Slatts 20 November 2009	How much RAM do you have on the win 98 system Peter? Anything that'll run on 98 should do it on 128 meg. the basic system will run on 15 meg. With your home system, how often do you defrag the hard drive? Run scandisk? Empty the left over temp files? How long since you did a reformat and clean install on either system? More often than not, when a system starts to run erratically / slowly, it's because the crap on the hard drive needs a good clean up.
petergaskin 21 November 2009	My firm is looking at upgrading from Novell circa 1988 version to Win 2008 server by end January 2010. As a consequence my 98 hard drive will cease to exist. All I have to do is work out how to install a 98 version of Myob8 on XP Professional. Anyone got any ideas? I will probably upgrade ram at the same time.
Slatts 21 November 2009	petergaskin wrote: My firm is looking at upgrading from Novell circa 1988 version to Win 2008 server by end January 2010. As a consequence my 98 hard drive will cease to exist. All I have to do is work out how to install a 98 version of Myob8 on XP Professional. Anyone got any ideas? I will probably upgrade ram at the same time. You could try running it in compatibility mode. eg: right click the icon on your desktop, click properties, go into the compatibility tab... The better option would be to go to the .exe file in the instalation folder and do it there. That way it wouldn't matter which icon you used to open it (programs menu, desktop..) Or you could load Microsoft's virtual machine and load a copy of 98 in it and install myob in there and copy your database across to it. Or you could let the moths out and get the latest version. You might have to talk to someone about getting it to open your old database but.
.:Cyb3rGlitch:. 22 November 2009	You'd probably be better off with VirtualBox if you end up using a VM.
Slatts 22 November 2009	As our resident night owl and others say, VirtualBox is reputed to be the better option. I've not used it myself but as I type and downloading the latest version from here (about 69MB). If you decide to get it, don't forget the manual. I'm going to load it and give the windows 7rc a spin on it.
.:Cyb3rGlitch:. 22 November 2009	The main advantage of VirtualBox is that it has GPU acceleration. It makes a huge difference to performance.
Slatts 22 November 2009	Well I spent most of the morning and a fair chunck of the afternoon getting win 98se running and updated on VirtualBox. when I say running I mean in the way that a one legged dog runs. The fact that I'm posting this from a firefox window in win 98se running in MS Virtual PC 07 is by way of a vote. .:Cyb3rGlitch:. wrote: The main advantage of VirtualBox is that it has GPU acceleration. It makes a huge difference to performance. I think that the reason I'm having so much trouble with running on VB is the fact that my graphics card is kinda outdated and doesn't have much in the way of spair cycles to contribute. The way it looks to me, if you're running fairly uptodate hardware then VB may well be the way to go. If your stuff is getting a bit long in the tooth, go with the Microsoft product.
rogue316 8 March 2010	dark41 wrote: While the X4 620 may be the cheapest quad core, the best value depends upon a users needs. If speed is important, the Intel i5 is better value. Comment made about the PC Authority article: AMDs Athlon II X4 620 is the best value quad core CPU you can buy? Nothing incredible in terms of design, but it’s an impressively cheap way to get quad-core in your PC. What do you think? Join the discussion. The i5's are not necessarily faster. The i5's START at around $229 and for the same price you can get a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition which will kill everything but the 900 series i7's. So why would you get an i5? I cant stand the hype that comes with the i5's. They are NOT as good as some of the higher rated AMD's, but seem to cost way more, why? I have built a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition system for my son and found it to be most impressive. I have used the i5's and the 800 series i7's (Not the i5 750 though) and don't believe them to be as good, so what is it your basing your observations on? Stop putting AMD down without using them first! Edited by rogue316: 8/3/2010 12:00:04 PM