Reviews - AMD Athlon II X4 620 and 630: introducing the budget quad-core CPUs

[HEXUS]

£80 for a quad-core chip? Can it be any good? Read on to find out.

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[danroyle]

that quad core is hugely impressive for the money it costs.

[GavinAshford]

I'm guessing you got stock direct from Gigabyte but if not where did you get the Sideport enabled board from - the Gigabyte MA-GA785GPMT-UD2H? (which i believe is actually GA-MA rather than the other way around link)

I've been hunting for a while but can only find the non-side port enabled version - with no P in the model name.

Also I'm wating for the 405e tri-core version (2.3ghz) of these Athlon II's to hit retail, early reports are saying the fourth core is unlockable to a full quad. And it only has TDP of 45w, which should make for a idle power consumption even lower than the already good 48w of the 95w TDP version reviewed here - perfect for a htpc.

[dangel]

Welcome back AMD - great performance at low cost - a win for me!

[Arthran]

my upcoming build is getting harder and harder to decide.
Quad core Athlon II 620
Tri Core Phenom II 720
Quad Core i5 750

gah...!

[scaryjim]

Also I'm wating for the 405e tri-core version (2.3ghz) of these Athlon II's to hit retail, early reports are saying the fourth core is unlockable to a full quad. And it only has TDP of 45w, which should make for a idle power consumption even lower than the already good 48w of the 95w TDP version reviewed here - perfect for a htpc.

If it manages to be anything like the idle on a Sempron 140 (which is an Athlon II X2 with one core turned off and *is* unlockable - I've done it to mine ) it should be very good. Also if you get a sufficiently well featured motherboard (I've got the mATX ASUS 785G EVO board) you can unvolt the processor for even greater power savings - my Sempron's currently running happily @ 1.2v, dropping to ~ 0.8v at idle with C&Q turned on...

I think the significance of these releases - and IMNSHO they are extremely significant - is that they bring multi-threaded goodness to the masses. This should encourage more developers to code efficiently for multiple cores, which will start making multicore processors a lot more desirable (at the minute I see very little day to day difference between my C2Q 6600 and my Sempron 140 - the vast majority of programs I run simply don't use the extra 3 cores...)

[cjs150]

I was thinking of upgrading the home server, which because of the RAID needs some CPU grunt. For £80 this is very attractive although the 405 tri-cores mentioned might be even nicer because of the lower power draw

AMD gets a big tick for this

[GavinAshford]

If it manages to be anything like the idle on a Sempron 140 (which is an Athlon II X2 with one core turned off and *is* unlockable - I've done it to mine ) it should be very good. Also if you get a sufficiently well featured motherboard (I've got the mATX ASUS 785G EVO board) you can unvolt the processor for even greater power savings - my Sempron's currently running happily @ 1.2v, dropping to ~ 0.8v at idle with C&Q turned on...

yeah, i did look at that asus one but after this review (I know its the full ATX, non mATX version) link the idle power draw is pretty big compared to the msi mATX they tested. its good to know the cores are easily unlockable, providing the board supports the feature.

i asked about the gigabyte board as i currently have the 780g old version from a year and a half ago with a 5000+ x2 black undervolted and its pretty decent on power; tested here with a 45w AMD Athlon X2 4850e link 2.

[silentphoenix]

This looks like a winner for AMD! Would be nice to see the gaming benchmarks using a discrete low (or mid or high) end graphics card so we can see a fairer comparison of the CPUs ability in gaming. Comparing performance of a 785G to the GMA4500 would surely be in favour of the 785G regardless of the processor used (well up to a certain point ;p), but I do accept that if we are looking at budget system you are likely to have the 785G VS GMA4500 as your graphics processing choices. Either way, I think I'll be getting one of these for my little sisters computer

[scaryjim]

... after this review (I know its the full ATX, non mATX version) link the idle power draw is pretty big compared to the msi mATX they tested...

I'm planning on getting an at-wall power meter and undervolting my Sempron further to see how much difference it makes, so watch out for a write up of that somewhere in the forums in the next couple of months (I'll probably include power draw figures for the unlocked dual-core as well...)

[simonw]

Great work AMD, not only is it competitive with Intel's low end C2Q, but I can see people who are thinking of picking up a similar priced C2D may take a second look at the Athlon II X4 too.

And I would not be surprised if OEMs start building PCs with this cpu.

[Arthran]

Practically impossible?

Impossible from a practical point of view perhaps

[Tarinder]

good range of CPU's but "Some may argue, with some justification, that a higher-clocked dual-core part would be a better bet - an Intel Core 2 Duo E8xxx or AMD Phenom II X2 550, for example. We'd always opt for more cores given a choice, simply because you can add clock-speed by better cooling and overclocking, but adding execution cores is practically impossible."

Practically impossible? eh? is there an "add new cores to a processor" mod ive been missing? Im a regular on xtremesystems.org and I have never heard anything of the like. Not a great review again Tarrinder, have to say.

Certain CPUs have cores disabled to meet a certain price-point, such as enabling quad-core CPUs from a triple-core design.

[scaryjim]

Got to back Tarinder up on this. I recently purchased a Sempron 140, which has a "genuine single-core design". Imagine my surprise when I changed a couple of BIOS settings and found I'd managed to add a whole execution core to my processor! So while there isn't an add *new* cores mod, for certain AMD processors there *is* an add *working* cores mod (I'm not going to rant about the blantant lie on the Sempron packaging at this point )

As far as cores vs. cache goes, the 620 makes a lot of sense at < £80, competing with the Phenom X2s and providing double the cores. The 630 appears to be > £90 and that brings the similarly clocked Phenom X3s into line: the improvement from 3 - 4 cores isn't going to be as great and it's probably worth going for the extra cache at that point. IMNSHO the most expensive Athlon X4 has to be cheaper than the cheapest Phenom X3 for it to make sense...

[Stefan_C]

That is a very good price I'm tempted

[madman045]

I am also tempted, but are the mobo's for AM3 DDR3 only? reason is I have 8GB DDR2 sitting here gathering dust and id rather build a cheap VM box.