AMD Athlon II X4 first sub-$100 quad-core - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 17 September 2009 / 2,755 Views
Over the last week there have been many reports about Intel gaining 4% of the CPU market, but this does not mean AMD has not found a way to one-up Intel in the quad-core race. Meet the Athlon II X4 620, and slightly more expensive Athlon II X4 630, the newest AM3 socket processors from AMD.
While price is an important factor for processors, whats truly the deciding factor for purchasing any new processor is the performance. Benchmarks have been appearing across the web showing how well the Athlon X4 620 stands up against its compitition, including pre-existing AMD processors.
As one can see by the 3DMark Vantage CPU test, done by folks at Tom's Hardware, the Athlon X4 620 easily beats out Intel's Core 2 Duo series and AMD's last generation Phenom processors. Even though the Athlon X4 630 isn't avaialble for testing yet it is easily expected to perform 4 - 5% better than the 620 due to the higher clock speed per core.
It seems AMD has released a processor that has the best value-to-performance ratio on the market.
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@raygun - its more than double the performance of my Athlon X2 7750BE and its fairly new. It also cost $60 when i got it. For $100 getting ~110% performance boost isn't that bad considering what they had on the market 6 months ago.
I checked this out yesterday, the cpu score means nothing, really. Check the game scores in the toms hardware review... not good at all.
@ssj12 - Thanks for that, I guess you got one of those i7's but it doesn't really matter. I thank you for having tried it yourself. That last # was my P rating on vantage total not my individual gpu score, sorry.
@ghstly - after downloading 3DMark Vantage and my CPU score getting 17612 I will say that your looking at the combined score and not individual score since my computer is a P5216.
@Ghstly - Tom's hardware is a very reliable source. I would have used Guru 3D as a source but their charts are flash based and can't be copied over to our site.
The only two things I can come up is about the Vantage differences you are seeing is that 1.0.2 are beta drivers available only to owners of the business editions and that there is a way to have an arrogated score system.
Another issue with your argument is that your CPU isn't listed and that your using an AM2+ socket. You would be happy to know that Guru 3D has the AM3 socket of your processor higher than the Athlon II X4 620.
EDIT:im sorry, i ran 3DMark Vantage ver 1.0.1 again to see and i got a 9851 score on my cpu. Phenom II 940 Socket am2+ (3.0Ghz). AMD Dragon Platform with 790gx nb and Raedeon 4870 (which got a 8792).
This source is BS. I have 3DMark Vantage and there is no 1.0.2!!! I just looked and it is the only site claiming to use it. Those scores are wrong too. I have a Phenom II x4 940 (3.0Ghz) and i got a 9779 score on cpu!!! They must be using 3DMark 06 because that has a 1.0.2 versoin and produces scores that high.
Go AMD!
Blackmoor - there are other reasons besides gaming to upgrade your CPU. Like newer anti-viruses can barely run on a Pentium II anymore. Graphic artists will get a bit more speed when rendering images. Music transcoding is faster. Even general OS tasks like opening programs are faster when you upgrade or get a new PC with newer hardware.
Upgrade once again, jeez just get a console and enjoy games on it period.
Hmm I need a new processor for my PC...
I was gonna post a thread about this.
Awesome value for this CPU, I'll probably be putting some denomination of Athlon II X4 in mom's computer when I build it for her.
Wow, talk about a great value! Also, I didn't realize the top-end Phenom's outscored the Intel quad cores. Go go AMD :)
Finally, I might actually be able to afford a computer upgrade for a change. My poor Opteron single core needs a change out.
It's a superb value for the price, no doubt.
