TechIndia

The AMD Athlon X2 7850 is a great processor for those on a budget. It gives you an unlocked multiplier for overclocking as well as a Phenom core for better performance as compared with a regular Athlon 6xx series (Brisbane core). While this may seem like the best option at 4K, AMD tempts us again with its latest offering - the Athlon II. Yes, just like the Phenom II’s, AMD has retained the Athlon brand name which signifies the budget performance CPU for many.

Specifications and Features

Unlike the Phenom II X2, which had two cores disabled, the Athlon die features just two cores it self. In fact, the die goes by a new name Regor, which is derived from the Phenom II core. The Athlon II die is less than half the size measuring just 117.5mm” as compared with a Phenom II die which measures 258mm” . The L2 cache has been toned down a bit to 2MB and the L3 cache has been done away with. Since it is based on socket AM3, it features both a DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller which works with DDR2 as well as DDR3 RAM. The total memory system memory bandwidth remains the same too at 33.1GB/s. One more advantage of the new Athlon II is a lower TDP of 65W as compared with 80W of the Phenom II X2.

Since this will be priced around the 4K bracket, we have AMD’s own X2 7850 BE against it as well as the Intel E5200. Going a little higher, we have the Phenom II X2 550 and the E7400 from Intel. Now, we don’t have a full line up of Intel CPU’s to test out so we’ll have to do with the E8400. Without further ado let’s see if the Athlon II X2 is worth the wait.

Testbench

For testing the Athlon II X2 250, we used the Asus M4A79 Deluxe motherboard that is based on the 790FX chipset and offers some nifty overclocking options. More importantly, it’s a rock solid board that we’ve used for testing the other processors in the past as well.

CPU: Athlon II X2 250
Motherboard: Asus M4A79 Deluxe
RAM: 2x 1GB G.Skill 1066MHz DDR2 memory
GPU: Nvidia 9600GT
HDD: WD Raptor 300GB
PSU: CoolerMaster 1000W

Super PI v1.1
Super PI is a computer program that calculates the value of pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point. It uses Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is based purely on number crunching, which is a true test for a CPU’s raw power. It’s also a very useful tool to test the stability of a system when overclocking. For our test, we set the limit to four million digits for all the CPU tests. Remember that Super PI is not multithreaded, so it will solely depend on the CPU speed and the architecture. Lower scores are better.

ScienceMark 2.0
This is another benchmarking tool used to stress the system by performing resource-intensive scientific calculations. It supports MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow and Hyper-Threading technologies and multi-processor systems.

Cinebench 10
Cinebench is a real-world test suite that assesses your computer’s performance capabilities. The test procedure consists of two main components: The first test sequence is dedicated to the computer’s main processor. A 3D scene file is used to render a photo-realistic image. The scene makes use of various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and proceduralshaders. We ran this for both, single CPU and multiple CPU’s, which is comparable across any operating system.

WinRar Benchmark
This a little benchmark built inside Winrar that generates a result in kb/s after processing 10MB of data. It gives you the average speed of compression for the concerned processor.

Processor Arithmetic

This benchmarks the ALU and FPU processor units. It shows how your processors handle arithmetic and floating point instructions in comparison with other typical processors.

Dhrystone (MIPS) - higher results are better, i.e. better integer performance.
Whetstone (MFLOPS) - higher results are better, i.e. better floating-point performance.

Processor Multimedia
This benchmarks the (W)MMX(2), SSE(2/3/4), AVX processor units. It shows how your processors handle multi-media instructions and data in comparison with other typical processors.

Multi-Media Integer (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better integer performance.
Multi-Media Single/Double Float (Pixels/s) - higher results are better, i.e. better floating-point performance.

Multi-Core Efficiency
This benchmarks the multi-core efficiency of the processors. It shows how efficient the processor cores and their inter-connects are in comparison to other typical processors. True multi-core processors that have shared L2/L3 caches will thus perform much better than cores that have separate caches and are connected by the traditional FSB.

Memory Bandwidth
This benchmarks the memory bandwidth of your computer. It shows how your memory sub-systems compare to other computers in terms of bandwidth.

Integer Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster memory bandwidth.
Float Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster memory bandwidth.

Cache and Memory
This benchmarks the processors caches and memory access (transfer speed). It shows how your processors caches and memory sub-systems compare to other computers in terms of access.

Cache/Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) - higher results are better, i.e. faster memory bandwidth.
Speed Factor (MB/s) - lower results are better, i.e. less difference between processor cache speed and memory speed.

DivX 7 Encoding

The latest iteration from DivX supports .mkv (Matroska) conversion and playback also known as DivX HD Plus. For today’s test, we have taken a 15 min full HD clip recorded from a HD camcorder (MTS format) and converted it to a 1080p AVI file (with .Divx extension). This new converter does a really good job with very little compression artifacts while shrinking the file size to less than half of the original.

FarCry 2

FarCry2 is the latest venture in the FarCry franchise now carried forward by Ubisoft instead of Crytec. The new Dunia engine incorporates many new features like advanced physics, dynamic fire, full day night cycle that stress the CPU a lot.
For the benchmark, we first tried a resolution of 1600×1200 with the settings set to High but that didn’t quite give me the scores I was looking for, as all processors ended up with the same score. Dropping the resolution to 1280×1024 and the details to low seemed to do the trick while Physics, Fire were kept at very high.

World in Conflict

This is another game that gets really CPU dependent at lower resolution (up to 1280×1024), which I’m pretty sure the vast majority still game at. But instead of running the test at that resolution, we used 1600×1200 while keeping the graphics card intensive settings like pixel shaders to low and Texture quality, Terrain texture, world distance were set to medium.

Overclocking

Overclocking the Athlon II X2 was not as simple as the other Phenom’s since the multiplier is locked. Instead, we had to go with the HT bus speed which is clocked at a default 200MHz. We pushed the bus speed upwards using 5MHz increments till we hit a wall at 225MHz. Anything beyond this and the PC would not be stable will constant crashes. We were able to reach 3.5GHz with a bump in the core voltage to 1.45 but again, the tests would not complete.

We finally settled at the same 225MHz for the HT bus giving us a speed of 3.38GHz, which was not much of an increase. But if you look at the graphs, the percentage increase in performance matches the increase in clock speed. So, in a way, a slight bump in speed translates in similar amount of performance gain, which is good.

Power Consumption

This is pleasant sight. For once, the power consumption of the new Athlon II X2 is even lower than the Intel E8400 and the other Phenom II’s and older Athlons. Even on load, the power consumed is not too high, thanks to the 45nm fabrication.

Pricing and Verdict
The proposed price of the Athlon II X2 is somewhere around Rs. 5,500 plus taxes. But looking at the current lineup, we have the Phenom II X2 retailing for a little under 5.5K, So, the actual street price will definitely be lower.

This is just the first phase of this new line up with a couple more Athlon II’s on the way so I would suggest you wait till the availability is widespread and the prices have settled. Once the price settles to around 4K, which it’s selling internationally at, this would make a really good buy.